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swarmofunder

In general, robots and water don't mix. Researchers from the Scripps Establishment of Oceanography at the Academy of California San Diego must not have gotten the memo. They've designed a swarm of underwater robots that tin assist scientists study the nearly arable life form in the ocean (and the foundation of all aquatic life), the apprehensive plankton.

The robots are known equally miniature autonomous underwater explorers (M-AUE). Each one is about the size of a grapefruit and is designed to bear like the plankton it volition help researchers understand. Each robot contains a cluster of sensors for monitoring temperature, depth, and other weather in the sea. They include a piston, which allows the robot to sink and rise in the water to maintain a constant depth. Again, like plankton.

Understanding plankton can exist vital to tracking the health of the oceans. Plankton are not a specific organism, just rather a diverse group that includes leaner, algae, plants, and pocket-sized animals. What they have in common is the way they drift along with the current and provide a food source for larger organisms like fish and whales. These organisms so in plough fill in their own ecological niche thanks to all those millions of plankton they ate.

It is hoped that the Thousand-AUEs will exist able to help unravel the mysteries of how plankton come to grade large clusters underwater. These patches of plankton occasionally surface as what is commonly referred to as "red tide." Decades ago, Scripps oceanographer Peter Franks detailed a mathematical theory that explains how swimming plankton could cease upward in crimson tide patches as sub-surface currents push them around. That'due south hard to confirm without tracking the movements of private plankton. The technology to do that doesn't yet exist, and so Jules Jaffe from Scripps designed the M-AUEs to test it.

Getting the perfect robotic plankton up and running was no elementary feat, according to Jaffe. The research requires very accurate location tracking, merely GPS doesn't piece of work underwater. With assistance from Qualcomm, the team was able to design an acoustic tracking arrangement to keep tabs on the robots. The outset 5-hour examination was undertaken recently with xvi 1000-AUEs programmed to maintain a depth of 10-meters. Sure enough, the robots ended up clustered together in the warm waters of the internal wave troughs. This supports the math Franks adult years ago.

The team hopes to continue using the robots to study plankton, and possibly adding cameras, microphones, and other instruments that could lead to new discoveries.