Robots may help cleaning Great Barrier Reef corals.
Our planet is home to vibrant, visually astounding corals.
However, corals' health is declining and they are looking increasingly brownish colored due to climate changes and pollution.
Until now, restoration efforts have involved human divers. For instance, divers from Fragments of Hope, a coral nursery in Belize, plant healthy pieces of coral in the dying reefs to aid restoration. However the efforts are time consuming, and there are many threatened areas where divers simply cannot reach.
That’s where a UK based team comes in. Working to create a swarm of robots, the goal is simple – to do the same job as humans, planting healthy corals to complete reef restoration across the globe.
Called Coral-Bots, the minds behind the venture state “All that remains is to embed the robots with computer vision to 'see' healthy bits of coral, and configure appropriate manipulator arms for each robot to pick up and put down the pieces in the right spots.”
The team is trying to raise funds on kickstarter.com.
According to reports, roughly 20 percent of the world’s reefs are dead while an additional 50 percent are under threat.
