Origami-inspired device safely traps delicate sea creature
The open ocean is the largest and least-explored environment on Earth. It is estimated to hold up to a million species that have yet to be described. However, many of those organisms — like jellyfish, squid, and octopuses — are soft-bodied and difficult to capture for study with existing underwater tools, which too frequently damage or destroy them. Now, a new device developed by researchers at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute, John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), and Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study safely traps delicate sea creatures inside a folding polyhedral enclosure and lets them go without harm using a novel, origami-inspired design. The research is reported in Science Robotics. “We approach these animals as if they are works of art: Would we cut pieces out of the ‘Mona Lisa’ to study it? No — we’d use the most innovative tools available. These deep-sea organisms, some being thousands...