Robot joins the fight against starfish Tuesday, 08 September 2015

Engineers from the QUT Institute for Future Environments have developed a robot to identify and kill crown-of-thorns starfish from the Great Barrier Reef.

The starfish preys on coral and is believed to be responsible for 40% of the reef’s total decline in coral cover.

The COTSbot is equipped with stereoscopic cameras to give it depth perception, five thrusters to maintain stability, GPS and pitch-and-roll sensors and a unique pneumatic injection arm to deliver a fatal dose of bile salts.

"Human divers are doing an incredible job of eradicating this starfish from targeted sites but there just aren't enough divers to cover all the COTS [crown-of-thorn starfish] hotspots across the Great Barrier Reef," said creator Dr Matthew Dunbabin.

"We see the COTSbot as a first responder for ongoing eradication programs - deployed to eliminate the bulk of COTS in any area, with divers following a few days later to hit the remaining COTS.”

Dr Feras Dayoub from the Australian Centre for Robotic Vision designed the software that allows the robot to recognise the starfish and said it will continue to learn from its experiences in the field.

"If the robot is unsure that something is actually a COTS, it takes a photo of the object to be later verified by a human, and that human feedback is incorporated into the robot's memory bank,” said Dr Dayoub.

"We've now trained the robot using thousands of images of COTS collected on the reef and the system is proving itself incredibly robust at detecting the COTS. That in itself is quite an accomplishment given the complexity of underwater environments, which are subject to varying visibility as well as depth-dependent colour changes."

The COTSbot is designed to search the reef for up to eight hours at a time, delivering more than 200 lethal shots.

The QUT roboticists will take COTSbot to the Great Barrier Reef later this month to trial it on living targets. In that trail, a human will verify each COTS identification the robot makes before the robot is allowed to inject it.

The COTSbot is planned to be working the reef autonomously in December.

 

Image: Feras Dayoub, QUT