The future of monitoring is always up for discussion, since costs can be reduced and efficiency can be improved. In the spring of last year I had an idea about mobile monitoring which could be interesting. To guarantee sufficient drinking water quality at the tap it is required to monitor the water quality of the source and at several points during production and distribution. Surface waters are also being monitored, in terms of chemical quality and ecological state. Monitoring can be executed 
using online monitoring equipment, taking samples and performing lab analysis, bioassays and several other methods. As the researcher, you want to know as much as possible with the least amount of effort (=costs). The area you are monitoring can be quite large, for example a whole distribution network, a certain part of a river, an entire lake. How easy is it to measure the water quality accurately?
I was thinking about the behavior of aquatic animals as a response to water quality. I am not sure if this is correct, but I assumed fish would probably naturally stay away from areas where the water is somewhat polluted, even if we are not able to measure the pollution. This got me thinking that we need to figure out how fish and other aquatic life measure or respond to the water quality. And that is how I ended up thinking of a robotic fish to measure water quality.
I named it Weddi, because it sounds cute. Water-explore-dream-discover-implement! It is a small robotic fish that will be capable of performing some type of measurement, the data can either be stored internally or transferred to a server. It will be possible to control We
ddi from a distance and send her anywhere you’d like her to be.
Weddi will be equipped with GPS so that it can be tracked wherever it goes, furthermore it will be able to gain energy from the natural flow of water, and it will be able to use this energy to move around when necessary. The main body of Weddi will have a diameter of 5 cm, meaning it will be able to be used in most underground networks.
The Weddi family consists of a series of fishes, Weddi-pH, Weddi-Temp, Weddi-Electrical Conductivity, Weddi-Sample, Weddi-Camera, etc. The individual fishes can be used individually or can be connected together to form some sort of snake.
Weddi sample will be able to take up to 10 samples of 1 ml, at the time of sampling it will store the GPS coördinates and the date and time.
The design is still very far from the natural method used by fish, but innovation from neurosciences and robotics will in the future perhaps lead to an improved method of mobile monitoring. Until then, we just keep swimming….