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The Great Barrier Reef Australia has seen better days. The immense wonder of nature deals with the effects of ocean warming (thanks to man-made climate change) that has repelled species and killed coral beds, but this is not the only problem the reef has had to face.
More recently, an influx of starfish has begun to invade the reef. It is thought that this is the result of chemicals from human activity flowing into the ocean. As CNET reports, some of these chemicals may have the unintended effect of promoting reproduction because of the increase in algae, which is exactly what sea stars are looking for to keep their offspring alive. But now, researchers have a robotic ally to control starfish populations, and it's a real killer.
The specific species of starfish that poses a problem is called the starfish crown of thorns. A burgeoning population of an aquatic creature seems to be good news for a reef system, but this one poses a major problem for one essential reason: it eats coral.
To combat this new threat, scientists at the University of Queensland have designed and built a system that can track starfish, identify them positively, and then deliver a toxic injection that kills them. The system was created in 2015, but has since been modified, debugged and is now implemented in a robot called RangerBot.
The robot, which weighs just over 30 pounds, is controlled via a tablet interface. The bot is smart enough to patrol alone, but if its managers want to take control of it, they can do it anytime.
Deploying a robot (or more) is obviously easier than charging human divers to chase starfish, and the robot is able to travel the seas for eight hours before needing to recharge them. Using a variety of observation instruments, the robot doubles as a monitoring device that can relay information about the state of the reef, giving scientists more data points to help them in their recovery efforts. .
RangerBot Source of the image: QUT
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