Robot Submarine Poisons Sea Stars To Save Coral Reefs

schwit1 writes: A 30-kilogram robotic yellow submarine is keeping sea stars in check with poison. The sea stars periodically have huge population booms, and a square kilometer of reef can be home to 100,000 of them. They'll kill off the reefs if left unchecked, but humans can only kill a couple sea stars per minute. The task is overwhelming but simple and repetitive, and thus ripe for automation. The COTSBot has "a maximum speed of over two meters per second and an endurance of over six hours. Five thrusters give it the capability of briefly hovering in the water column, giving it time to attack crown of thorns sea stars with an integrated poison injection system. It's completely autonomous, down to the identification and targeting of [sea stars] lurking among coral."

Comments

First they came for the sea stars...

[Anonymous Coward]

First they came for the sea stars, but I said nothing...

Re:What could go wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, we did. Rising ocean temps, dredge spoils and the various things that get into the water from agriculture have seen an explosion in the Crown of Thorns Starfish population, enough to be a threat to the Great Barrier Reef, they leave behind forests of dead, bleached coral, which takes hundreds of years to build up.