Could studying the locomotion of fish be the key to developing more versatile underwater vehicles and robotics systems? The U.S. Navy appears to think so -- based on the fact that its Office of Naval Research has issued a 258,008 grant to researchers at Florida Atlantic University for that purpose. Dr. Oscar Curet of the university's Department of Ocean and Mechanical Engineering has spent the past several years investigating fish-like robots. His latest: a 16-motored robot based on the blade-like knife fish, is one of the most promising yet. "I'm interested in the fluid dynamics of biosystems," Curet told Digital Trends.