In 1991, Walt Conti founded his visual effects company, Edge Innovations. A few years later he built the now famous robotic orca used in the movie Free Willy. Since then, Walt and his team of engineers and artists have gone on to work on some of the most prestigious Hollywood projects. Edge has also participated in the development of unmanned underwater vessels for research and development projects. But it was the work on Free Willy that inspired Walt to attempt his latest project.

The film highlighted the plight of large marine animals being kept in captivity. Free Willy and other films like Blackfish have been a catalyst to stop marine parks from featuring aquatic mammals. It’s a double-edged sword. On one hand, these animals need to be in the wild. On the other hand, marine parks do serve as one of the greatest contributors financially and scientifically to marine animal research. They also provide the majority of the world with an opportunity to experience and learn about these majestic creatures. “It’s easy to kind of demonize the marine park industry as a whole,” Walt said. “But we don’t think that’s the answer. We just want to transition them to the future in a more sustainable way.” Walt’s solution, a drone disguised as a dolphin that can replace captive dolphins.

Enter Delle, Edge Innovation’s dolphin drone that is so convincing that fish in an aquarium behaved around it as they would a real dolphin. Delle is 8.5ft long and weighs 600lbs. In the wild, a bottlenose dolphin can grow between 10-14ft long and weigh as much as 1,100lbs, positioning Delle as about the average size of a captive dolphin. The hard part was for Edge to replicate how a dolphin moves and behaves. After studying hundreds of videos of dolphins both in captivity and in the wild, the team wrote a program that relates a dolphin’s movements to mechanical accelerations and torques.

In North America and much of Europe, fewer and fewer marine parks are keeping marine mammals captive. But throughout Asia, the practice is more popular than ever. As of 2019, China alone had 80 marine parks featuring large marine mammals, with another 27 parks in development. One of these 27 parks, located in mainland China, reached out to Edge Innovations after realizing how much it would cost them to purchase and maintain large marine mammal attractions. While a live dolphin will cost a marine park around $100,000, maintaining the animal can cost millions each year. Delle costs $3 million to $5 million, but does not need to be fed 20lbs of food a day or need a vet. The drone only needs to be recharged every few hours.

“We have seen dolphins and orcas doing acrobatics in arenas for 50 years,” Walt said. “We want to create a whole new set of experiences that this technology allows.” The drone is not fully ready to be introduced into a marine park setting. Right now it needs to be attached to a tether for a power source and is mostly operated via remote control. Edge is working on enhancing the drone’s battery capacity and implementing a stronger AI system to allow autonomous operation. Ultimately, Walt sees drones like Delle as being connectors between humans and the natural world. “We actually want to expand ways for people to fall in love with these animals,” Walt said, “which at the core, is really what the mission is and should be for all these marine parks.”