Autonomous swarms of Coral-bots to rebuild world's coral ree

[frigidmagi]

Wired

Autonomous swarms of underwater drones could one day repair the world's coral reefs. That's the vision of the marine biologists and robotics experts behind Coral-bots, a project to save and rebuild damaged coral reefs.

Coral reefs are underwater structures created by the calcium carbonate secreted by organisms known as corals. In short, great big crowdsourced skeletons. However, they're under threat. It has been estimated that 20 percent of the world's coral reefs has already been destroyed.

Destructive fishing practices like bottom-trawling -- dragging a heavy net along the seabed -- do catastrophic damage to reefs, which, given their slow rate of growth, is practically permanent.

That's where Coral-bots come in.

[Coral] is able to regenerate and regrow, but the process is very slow," explains project leader Henry, from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. "If you can find living pieces of coral and cluster them together, you can speed up that process and repair the reef".

By searching the wreckage of the reef for still-living pieces of coral, and collecting them together, Coral-bots may in the future be able to undo some of the damage that has been done to reefs. They could be deployed in areas known to be badly affected by trawling, or in the aftermath of a hurricane.

This is something that's currently done on by hand, for example by the Fragments of Hope coral nurseries in Belize. However, the time required and limitations associated with diving make it difficult to scale up: "You have tropical reefs that have been damaged over many kilometres," says Henry. Automating the repair process could allow conservationists to rebuild damaged reefs on a scale never before seen.

"This project explores one of the most intriguing and impressive feats of natural 'swarm intelligence', whereby collections of simple-minded individuals collaborate to construct complex and functional structures," said David Corne, a computer scientist at Heriot-Watt's Intelligent Systems Group.

Nessie 4Heriot-Watt University
The research is still at an early stage. The team are developing the Coral-bots using "Nessie 4", a robot developed by the Ocean Systems Laboratory at Heriot-Watt University. The team say they have successfully tested their prototype in open water, and have trained its visual recognition systems to identify pieces of coral, though this is yet to be tested at sea.

The team has launched a Kickstarter to raise $107,000 (£70,000) for the next phases of the project, which include incorporating robot arms so that the bots can grab and move pieces of coral, as well as testing two Coral-bots working together.

Adapted from robots developed by, the fully functioning Coral-bots will be demonstrated in action at a public aquarium if the Kickstarter is successful, before going on to open-water trials on shallow water reefs in Belize.

The kickstarter is here