by Maria Khochinskaya

The National Science Foundation has awarded a grant to researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and Syracuse University to create autonomous underwater vehicles capable of traversing complicated settings and gathering data over long periods of time.

The WHOI team, directed by computer scientist Yogesh Girdhar, seeks to create a robot capable of exploring a coral ecosystem and monitoring the biomass, biodiversity, and behavior of creatures living in or passing through a reef over long periods of time.

Girdhar and a team of WHOI biologists including Aran Mooney, Frants Jensen, research assistant professor at Syracuse University and former WHOI postdoctoral fellow, and Seth McCammon, WHOI postdoctoral scholar, received a $1.5 million grant titled "An Ecologically Curious Robot for Monitoring Coral Reef Biodiversity." It was created as part of the National Science Foundation's National Robotics Initiative 3.0, a program to encourage foundational research that supports the integration of robots for the benefit of people, such as human safety and independence.

Coral reefs benefit the health of the ocean as well as a vast number of people across the planet. One in every four marine animals depends on reefs at some point in their lives, and reef ecosystems provide food, work, and protection from storms and erosion to hundreds of millions of people.

According to a 2020 study on the state of coral reefs throughout the globe, the worth of the advantages reefs give is $2.7 trillion per year. Despite this, reefs are declining globally due to rising temperatures, ocean acidification, pollution, and other stressors. And scientists are working feverishly to better comprehend complicated reef ecosystems and create solutions to a mounting issue.

“The tools we have right now to study coral reefs are pretty primitive,” stated Girdhar. “The robots and the sensors we have at the moment can’t capture the spatial and temporal diversity of a reef at the same time. We want to amplify the capability of scientists in the field and the tools they’re using.”

Girdhar and his colleagues foresee a robot that would integrate two fundamental ways of viewing a coral reef—image collecting and sound analysis—and utilize the knowledge gathered to navigate and investigate a reef in the same way that a skilled diver would. The researchers expect that by combining the two, the robot would be able to gradually develop a thorough picture of ecosystem function and health, much like a trained scientist might over time.

Another disadvantage of robotic sensing is that the presence of a moving vehicle moving underwater might disturb the activity of the species that the vehicle wishes to watch, spreading them to different sections of the reef or driving them to hide. To minimize its influence on animal behavior, the vehicle will "hop" through a reef, traveling for short distances before landing on the bottom to watch and gather data for lengthy periods of time.

“We envision putting the robot in a reef, and having it come back in a week or month with a detailed understanding of how biodiversity is distributed across the reef in space and time,” said Girdhar. “It will really give coral reef scientists more bang for the buck over each deployment.”

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) is a private, non-profit organization committed to marine research, engineering, and higher education on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. WHOI is well-known for its interdisciplinary approach, exceptional ship operations, and unrivaled deep-sea robotics capabilities.