Underwater robot delivers coral to damaged reef populations

Researchers have built a robot that can help damaged reefs by dropping baby coral. From corals that have survived mass bleaching, a team collects coral spawned. That coral is then raised inside enclosed areas on a reef for 5 to 7 days. After, the tiny new corals are delivered to reefs that need it the most. The process is called larval restoration and can be done by hand but why do that when the robot can cover 1500 square meters in one hour?! 

Known as the LarvalBot, this past winter it delivered 100,000 corals to the Great Barrier Reef. 

The LarvalBot is controlled by a tablet and able to navigate through the reef using computer vision. What’s amazing is that it can do a lot more than that. Counting turtles and monitoring water quality are just a couple tasks it’s capable of. 

The team behind the LarvalBot have begun providing it to conservation groups and are excited for this to be scaled globally. What do you think about this solution?