HEMISPHERESMAGAZINE.COM
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MAY 2013
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ILLUSTRATION BY JAMES PROVOST
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Thanks toHeriot-Watt’s strong
undersea engineering program, the team
already has a robot—Nessie IV—that
might be able to do the job. However, it
needs newappendages gentle enough
to avoid crushing the coral. AnAustrian
engineering firmcalled FerRobotics is
working on a “soft-fingered” model that
should fill the bill.
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If the robots started gluing starfish to
the reef, that would be bad. So tomake
sure they can recognize coral, the team is
showing them thousands of photos from
uniformheights andmultiple angles. The
problem?Not enough of these photos
exist. Henry is launching a Kickstarter
campaign so that, among other things, her
colleagues in Belize can takemore.
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Computer algorithms for bees’
hive-building have existed for decades.
The scientists aremodifying them towork
better for reef building. They’re also using
a swarmstrategy called stigmergy, in
which amarker (like a small block) is left
behindwith each piece of coral, tomake
sure the robots don’t try to pick up pieces
that others have already attached.
BEELIKE ROBOTS SWARM TO THE RESCUE OF CORAL REEFS
Possibly because they don’t have much travel-brochure cachet, the coral reefs in the deep seas
around Scotland haven’t a racted the same kinds of conservation efforts as their more diveable
cousins. That’sunfortunate, because these are exactly the types of reefs that tend toget destroyed
by ships trawling for deepwaterfish. Butwhile trawlers can thoroughlydismantle reefs, theydon’t
necessarily kill the remaining bits of coral—which is where marine biologist Lea-Anne Henry of
Edinburgh’s Heriot-Wa University comes in. She and her team (which includes a “swarm intel-
ligence”mathematician) thinktheymightbeable torepair the reefsusingrobots trainedtorea ach
broken coral the sameway bees build hives. If all goes according to plan, the coralbots could start
reconstructing their first test reef, inBelize, in fall 2014. Here’s howthey’ll do it.
BY JACQUELINEDETWILER
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INNOVATION BUSINESS GADGETRY
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HOW IT’S DONE
