Navy Considering Robot Jellyfish

For use in underwater surveillance

Meet Cyro, the latest robotic jellyfish to emerge from the engineering labs at Virginia Tech.

Cyro measures 5 feet, 7 inches across and weighs in at 170 pounds. Its design was based on the real-life species Cyanea capillata, one of the largest jellyfish in the world. (Cyro is an amalgam of "Cyanea" and "robot.") When submerged in a pool, the robot flaps its eight arms and swims gracefully.

"Our goal with this robot is to copy the natural jellyfish," Alex Villanueva, a grad student at Virginia Tech's college of engineering, explains in the video above.