The robot dolphin that could replace captive animals at theme parks 1 day
Darting around the pool as several swimmers stands in the shallow end, the dolphin looks much like the ones that jump through hoops and perform acrobatics at theme parks.
But this marine creature is a robot.
"When I first saw the dolphin, I thought it may be real," said a female who swam with the remote-controlled creature.
Edge Innovations, a U.S. engineering company with an animatronic and special effects division in California, designed the dolphin, which starts at $3 million to $5 million.
It hopes that life-like animatronics used in Hollywood movies could one day entertain crowds at theme parks, rather than wildlife held in captivity. Swimmers could dive with robotic great white sharks or even reptiles that filled Jurassic-era seas an incredible number of years ago.
"There are like 3,000 dolphins currently in captivity being used to create several vast amounts of dollars simply for dolphin experiences. Therefore there's obviously an appetite to love and find out about dolphins," said Edge Innovations founder and CEO Walt Conti.
"And so you want to use that appetite and provide kind of various ways to fall in love with the dolphin."
Animatronics may recreate audiences switched off by parks using live animals, said Conti.
Some 20 European countries have previously banned or limited the existence of wild animals in circuses.
At Edge's Hayward, California headquarters, its 550-pound (250-kg), 8-and-a-half-foot (2.5-meter) animatronic dolphin with skin created from medical-grade silicone headlined a program for schools together with TeachKind, part of individuals for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).
Edge also made the aquatic creatures used in Hollywood blockbusters "Free Willy," "Deep Blue Sea" and "Anaconda."
"The idea of this pilot is absolutely to create a kind of"Sesame Street" under water," said Roger Holzberg, imaginative director for Edge's animatronic program.
"Those characters taught a generation how to feel about different varieties of areas of humankind with techniques that had never been imagined before. And that is what we imagine with this project."
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