robot tagged posts

“It’s a really special part of the world,” says marine biologist Taryn Foster from the Abrolhos Islands, 40 miles from the coast of Western Australia. “There are no palm trees or luscious vegetation. But once you get in the water, you see all these tropical species of coral and fish.” Corals are animals called polyps, found mostly in tropical waters. The soft-bodied polyp forms a hard outer shell by extracting calcium carbonate from the sea. Over time those hard shells build up to form the foundations of the reefs we see today. Coral reefs may only cover 0.2% of the seafloor, but they provide a habitat to more than a quarter of marine species.

However, the creatures are sensitive to heat and acidification so in recent years, as the oceans have warmed and become more acidic, corals ha...

A fleet of robotic jellyfish has been designed to monitor delicate ecosystems, including coral reefs. The underwater drones were invented by engineers at Florida Atlantic University and are driven by rings of hydraulic tentacles. The robots can squeeze through tight holes without causing damage.

One expert praised the design but warned that the man-made jellyfish might be eaten by turtles.

The flexible, 20cm-wide bots are modelled on the appearance of the moon jellyfish during its larval stage.

The design is intended to be less environmentally disruptive than a drone submarine, according to Prof Erik Engeberg, of Florida Atlantic University.

“Mini-submarines are rigid and typically use a propeller for locomotion,” he said...

Crown-of-thorns starfish are having a devastating impact on the health of the Great Barrier Reef but a robot drone is set to track and kill them. RangerBot is a hunting machine that uses a hi-tech vision system to track and kill crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS), as well as monitoring reef health indicators like coral bleaching and water quality. The machine has been developed over the past ten years by roboticist Matthew Dunbabin in collaboration with Queensland University of Technology, Google and the Great Barrier Reef Foundation.

The deadly starfish pose a huge threat to the coral in the Great Barrier Reef. According to a report, published in the journal Nature, COTS outbreaks have a higher impact on reef health than coral bleaching and disease combined...