Swimming around in their tank, these autonomous robotic jellyfish move alone or in a swarm and communicate with their brethren to avoid underwater collisions. Developed by German industrial-automation company Festo as an attention-grabbing experiment in cooperative robotics, each AquaJelly uses eight bendable “tentacles” to propel itself forward.

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For most of us, jellyfish are nothing more than a nuisance. They drift toward beach shores and into our consciousness each summer near the end of their life cycle, making a refreshing dip in the water a bit less carefree for a few weeks. But that may be changing.

Last November, a 10-mile-wide and 42-foot-thick swarm of baby mauve stingers (Pelagia noctiluca) decimated Northern Ireland’s farmed-salmon population. Overnight,120,000 fish were reduced to a floating mass of carcasses by billions of the small jellies native to warmer waters thousands of miles to the south. The salmon, which were killed by stings and oxygen deprivation, had a market value of $2 million.

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At a conference in Germany, engineers unveiled a robotic jellyfish designed to swim—but not sting—like the real thing.

The AquaJelly runs on rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, has a roughly spherical body and uses eight tentacles to get around in the water. The tentacles undulate like the tail of a real fish, and small fins at the ends give the machine a little extra push on the water. To steer, the robot shifts its weight, and it drives around its tank autonomously.

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