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We're revolutionizing how we study coral reefs by combining robotics, artificial intelligence, and advanced imaging techniques. These innovations help us work more efficiently while gathering better data about reef health and changes.
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Traditional reef surveys involve taking top-down photographs and identifying organisms under randomly placed points. While these methods have given us decades of valuable data, they miss a lot of detail - imagine trying to map a city by only looking at a few random spots from above. We particularly struggle to identify non-coral organisms like soft corals, sponges, and algae, which are now more abundant than corals on many reefs.
That's where UVI's ever-expanding robotic fleet comes in. This fleet includes SLOCUM gliders owned by the Ocean Glider Laboratory that was established in 2022 by Doug Wilson and his team and with funds from a Major Research Instrumentation award. Also included are three RangerBots, a tethered BlueROV, and soon, a new Hydrus robot specifically designed for precise coral reef surveys.
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We're also harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to automatically identify coral species and other reef organisms in our images. Masters student Zachary Gregory successfully trained AI models to identify specific coral genera like Orbicella and Agaricia in deep reef environments. We're now expanding this work to develop more sophisticated AI systems that can work with both 2D photos and 3D models.
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last updated 14 September 2024