They may look like the real thing, but don’t waste time throwing bread to these swans – they’ve got bigger fish to fry.

They are in fact robots packed with sensors, that are being used to test the quality of drinking water in Singapore’s reservoirs.
 
The roboswans, collectively called NUSwan, were created by researchers from the National University of Singapore. They’re designed to test things like levels of dissolved oxygen and chlorophyll, while blending into the natural environment.
 
The swans are fitted with underwater propellors, allowing researchers to direct them at will, although they are also capable of travelling autonomously. Readings are sent in real time back to the cloud, where the data can be aggregated.

Additional sensors and actuators can be also added when necessary to increase the swans' monitoring abilities.

According to the robots' developers, the swans are sturdy enough to survive encounters with kayaks and small boats. But their main advantage is that the national water agency will no longer have to send its scientists out in a boat to collect water samples manually.

"Freshwater reservoirs are complex environments that are highly dynamic over time and space. The water quality of the reservoir can be affected by factors such as increasing urbanisation, recreation and other human activities in the catchments," the researchers behind the project said.

"At present, water quality monitoring is typically conducted using fixed online stations which provide limited coverage, by taking a boat to fixed locations to collect grab samples, or by taking manual in-situ measurements, which are tedious and time-consuming.”