Engineer’s Contraption Lets Humans Leap Like Dolphins

Thousands of miles away from UC Berkeley, graduate student Anthony Levandowski applied his industrial engineering talents in the waters of Australia to become a "human dolphin" for Animal Planet's new show, "Chasing Nature," last week.

Levandowski worked with students from Stanford University and Northwestern University during Thanksgiving break to construct a human dolphin apparatus for the show, which challenges engineering students to construct devices that mimic animal behavior.

Within less than a week, the group had to create a system that could propel human swimmers more than five feet into the air to simulate a dolphin jump.

The students designed a mermaid-like suit that was eventually combined with a harness system and water jetpack to complete the device.

"Myself and Neil from Stanford were assigned to give it more power," Levandowski said.

A native of Belgium, Levandowski entered UC Berkeley as an undergraduate in 1998, later enrolling in UC Berkeley's College of Engineering as a graduate student in 2002.

Levandowski's involvement in "Chasing Nature" came from not only his talents in robotics, but also his outgoing personality.

"I got involved with the show because I got referred by the College of Engineering as an interesting engineering student," Levandowski said.

As he prepared to leave for Australia, Levandowski said he was excited, but had no knowledge of what was in store for him.

"It was difficult because we didn't know what we were doing," Levandowski said.

Levandowski got off to a quick start in Australia, as the group swam with a dolphin and designed and constructed the initial apparatus by the end of the second day.

Since they were limited by time, little cutting-edge technology was introduced, Levandowski said.

After completion, each of the four team members tested the device, with Levandowski jumping 20 feet, the farthest distance.

Appearing on the show offered Levandowski an opportunity to see the world of reality television from the inside-a different perspective than the typical engineering graduate student enjoys.

"My favorite part of the whole thing would definitely be working with the crew and seeing how the shows are made, seeing how real life needs to be repeated over and over to make it more interesting so it can air on TV," Levandowski said.

The extensive amount of staging that was needed to create "reality" television came as an eye opening experience, Levandowski said.

The episode featuring Levandowski is slated to be the 10th in the series and is currently scheduled to air in late March on Animal Planet.

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