Meet the cyborg jellyfish that seems straight out of a science fiction movie

While many beachgoers may see jellyfish as the bane of existence, Nicole Xu sees them as a potential ally in learning more about how climate change is affecting the oceans. The assistant professor in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder has developed a system that can control their movements, enabling researchers to steer these marine animals.

“Think of our device like a pacemaker on the heart,” Xu told CU Boulder Today. “We’re stimulating the swim muscle by causing contractions and turning the animals toward a certain direction.”

Her long-term goal is to outfit these ‘cyborg’ jellies with sensors that will be able to collect critical data that could make aquatic research easier and more cost effective. Additionally, she is studying how jellies use their propulsion system to move through the water with the hope of developing more efficient marine vehicles in the future.

All of this while making sure to do so in an ethical way, striving to minimize harm to the animals with which she works.

Using ‘cyborg’ jellyfish to explore uncharted waters

Exploring the ocean can be a costly proposition requiring prohibitively expensive specialized gear that can tolerate extreme conditions. Furthermore, the ocean is so vast and deep with unpredictable conditions that having that equipment everywhere it should ideally be, is not possible.

Thus, Xu came up with the biohybrid robotic jellyfish concept around five years ago in conjunction with her former academic advisor. These marine creatures are found throughout the ocean and while they typically are seen near shorelines, some species can dive to depths of 23,000 feet below the surface.

She works with moon jellyfish, which can each impressve deeps of almost 3,300 feet. Although they might not be super deep-sea divers, they have one major benefit, their stingers cannot penetrate human skin.

In 2020, Xu performed her first field tests of the miniature electronic devices, which activate key swimming muscles, in the shallow ocean waters off the coast of Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

However, she hopes to also learn from the moon jellies in her lab to better understand how they move with such ease through the ocean. These marine animals over their more than 500 million years of existence on Earth are the most energy-efficient creatures on the planet.

“There’s really something special about the way moon jellies swim,” Xu said. “We want to unlock that to create more energy-efficient, next-generation underwater vehicles.”

Studying jellyfish movement in an ethical way

In order to analyze how water flows when jellyfish swim, researchers shine a laser through the tank to illuminate suspended particles in the water. Previously, silver-coated glass beads and other synthetic tracers were employed.

Looking for a less toxic, more sustainable and affordable alternative to visualize underwater flow patterns they found starch, such as that from corn, to be an eco-friendly replacement. Xu, along with research associate Yunxing Su and graduate student Mija Jovchevska, presented their findings in a recent paper.

Not only is it biodegradable and digestible, minimizing risks to live organisms and the environment, but they “confirmed that starch particles accurately visualized velocity and vorticity fields, effectively capturing flow structures,” the study states.

While it was once a widely held belief among scientists that invertebrates couldn’t feel pain, there is a growing body of evidence that some react adversely to harmful stimuli. Xu says that her jellies are not exhibiting any of those signs of stress, quite the contrary, even thriving with their tanks lined with baby jellyfish.

“It’s our responsibility as researchers to think about these ethical considerations up front. But as far as we can tell, the jellyfish are doing well. They’re thriving,” Xu said.

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