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China Developing Robot for 6,000-m Underwater Operations
China is developing a robot with hands for operations 6,000 meters underneath the surface of the sea, the first of its kind in the world, its developer said Monday in Shenyang, provincial capital of Northeast China's Liaoning Province.
Wang Tianran, of the Shenyang Institute of Automation under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said the robot will be able to do what existing robots can not do underwater, because it has hands.
China's first robot able to operate at a depth of 6,000 meters, which passed its first sea tests in 1995, had no appendages and could do nothing more than make observations.
But the limbless robot enabled China to become one of the very few countries in the world capable of probing 97 percent of the oceans, with the exception of the oceanic trenches, for mineral resources and other purposes.
Industrial robots developed by the institute, China's only robot research and development base, occupy one third of China's market.
In recent years, more than 200 industrial robots it developed have been used in the automobile, machinery, household appliance and airplane manufacturing industries.
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