Xiaobo Tan / MSU College of Engineering

A ROBOTIC fish may be an unlikely ally in the fight against antibiotic resistance. Swimming through streams and lakes, it will monitor the levels of antibiotics in the water, among other pollutants.

The prototype will soon be sent below the surface of the lakes near Michigan, which are under threat from industrial pollution and contaminants from farming.

“The water is getting increasingly contaminated with multiple pollutants,” says Alicia Douglas at the Water Rising Institute. Antibiotics are among them, she says, and are becoming a growing risk because we know so little about how they spread.


“The idea is to put sensors on the robots so that you can gather data from different locations in an automated manner,” says Xiaobo Tan at Michigan State University. By understanding the antibiotic levels in different parts of the lake, it should be easier to work out where they are coming from.

Robofish aren’t the only robots monitoring pollutants around the world. A robotic orca is tracking pollution in a reservoir in Tibet, and an artificial swan is doing the same in Singapore’s Pandan Reservoir.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Robofish sniffs out scent of drugs”