What makes this snake-like robot so special?

If you haven’t heard of Carnegie Mellon’s snakebot, it is basically what its name suggests. A long cylindrical robot that moves much like a snake, the snakebot has been engineered to do a number of things over the years including grabbing objects and climbing sand dunes. But the university’s latest iteration of the snakebot is taking it to new depths, literally.

The Hardened Underwater Modular Robot Snake (HUMRS) was made waterproof with adapted water-resistant modules that had been used to make the snakebot resistant to non-ideal conditions in the past. The team then added turbines and thrusters to propel the bot through the water, and presto!, they had a fully submersible swimming robot.

The team envisions the HUMRS being a useful tool for inspecting ships that are out of port, as well as pipes and other submerged infrastructure that is difficult for larger underwater robots to get to.