There are few things more heartbreaking than seeing a dolphin or a whale trapped in a tiny tank at an aquarium or theme park, especially if they’re trained to perform for visitors.

While many establishments have tried to increase the size of the tanks, there’s no way to fully imitate the ocean.

The only upside to the exhibits is that they help educate the public about these creatures, but at what cost?

Instead of eliminating these experiences, scientists have come up with a creative solution to the problem.

Here’s Gizmodo:

An idea that was first tested over 20 years ago might be the solution. At The Living Seas exhibit at Disneyworld’s Epcot center, which features a six million gallon aquarium, a robotic dolphin (also known as the Dolphin Robotic Unit, or DRU) would swim around the tank and interact with real divers and real sea life as part of a scripted performance for guests.

It didn’t fool anyone until the robotic dolphin was used as part of an interactive experience at Castaway Cay, a private island Disney owns in the Bahamas used as a stop for its various cruise ships.

Guests were able to get in the water and interact with the dolphin, and despite knowing it was a robot, the experience felt far more real given how close they were able to get to it.

Two decades later, and special effects technicians, Edge Innovations, working with Walt Conti and Roger Holzberg, the former Creative Director and Vice-President at Walt Disney Imagineering, have built a robotic dolphin that is almost indistinguishable from the real thing.

Here’s a video from 2009:

And here’s the dolphin now:

I’ll give it this – it’s significantly less terrifying than Boston Dynamic’s robot ‘dogs’.

The robotic dolphin was designed to not only simulate the movements and appearance of an actual adolescent-aged bottlenose dolphin, but to feel like one too with a realistic skeletal and muscle structure underneath its outer skin, and accurate weight distribution that helps make its swimming motions look like the creative is actually alive. But it’s not.

The one thing missing from the dolphin are cameras and sensors that would allow it to move autonomously. For the moment, it’s more of a puppet that has to be controlled by a nearby operator.

You could make the argument that a dolphin in a live show is being controlled by a trainer, so I don’t see the problem here.

This upgraded robotic dolphin isn’t headed for a Disney theme park or resort, instead, it’s being developed and tested for a series of attractions at a new Chinese aquarium where the government has put a stop to the wildlife trade as part of its efforts to slow and eventually stop the spread of Covid-19.

Even after the pandemic, with robots that look, feel and move like the real thing, there’s no reason to go back to real dolphins. The robots don’t need to eat, and can’t get sick, so there’s also an economic incentive for aquariums to replace real dolphins with fakes.

If the batteries run out just tell the kids it’s sleeping.

They’ll never know the difference.

Oh, before you go – if you want to read a really wild story about dolphins, take a moment and read the tale of Margaret Howe Lovatt, who in the 1960s took part in a NASA-funded research project, in which she developed an unusual relationship with a dolphin named Peter.

Yeah, you could certainly call it unusual.

[source:gizmodo]