By Fraser Bohm 9 C
Essay: How will the Coralbot benefit us and the environment?
The Coralbot is an exciting new technology that will allow us to artificially rebuild damaged reefs.
The people who are designing and building it are a team from Heriot Watt University who are only able to due to fundraising and a ‘kickstarter’ project.
In this essay I will be mainly looking at the technologies involved in making the Coralbot e.g. swarm technology, camera, and motion sensors.
I will also be looking at the benefits to be had using the Coralbot as opposed to divers: more efficient, can dive deeper, can work better together, and can help the reef grow quicker. But I will also be looking at the consequences of using coralbots as opposed to divers: leaving more professional divers unemployed, divers do not use up fuel or electricity and humans do not break.
Normally corals are easily ravaged by pollution and devastating fishing practices and it takes decades for them to grow again. Corals are colonies of tiny living organisms, most commonly found in the warm shallow waters of the tropics. However, the depths of the Atlantic Ocean just off the west coast of Scotland are where cold-water reefs grow. When they get damaged, scuba divers are forced to re-cement broken fragments, helping them re-grow - but it is almost impossible for divers to reach depths over 200m which greatly hinders the regrowing process as without the divers’ help the coral will not have a chance to regrow before being pulverised again. Also I will be looking at how not having a reef will affect us and the environment and whether the coralbot will even be able to save our reefs. (Scots universities win funding for robotics research)
Coralbots, the researchers hope, will be a lot more efficient, and will be able to repair the reefs in several days, a week at the most. As well as this I will look at whether the Coralbot will even make a difference: are we destroying the reef faster than we can repair it or are we not staunching the problem at the source- the pollution, dredging and destructive fishing? I will also look at how the coralbot has and will develop, what the crucial points of its development were and who had a crucial role in the design and technologies involved in it. (Scots universities win funding for robotics research)
Swarm technology was invented by an American electrical engineer called James McLurkin who came up with the idea. He decided to make robot ants at his artificial intelligence laboratory (Ant robotics) using sensors invented by Eric Fossum, (Eric Fossum)
infrared emitters invented by B Georg Horstmann (electric infrared emitter) and communication systems which are able to detect objects in their path. In the case of the coralbot, the swarm technology would be used like this:
CORAL FOUND ?
Yes No
Pick up and communicate find to the other bots
Carry on moving and looking

By Fraser Bohm 9 C
Another technology used in the coralbot is the motion sensor, which will help it avoid crashing into objects and other robots. The type of motion sensor it will be using will be the 360 degree proximity sensor which will be used because then the robots can sense all the objects around them instead of just in 1 direction. The motion sensor works by emitting radio energy into its surroundings and monitoring the reflection pattern - in the case of the motion sensor that will be mounted on the coralbot, it will detect an object in its path and then have to move in an object-free direction. It would need the have 360 degree ‘vision’ so that if its path was fully blocked to the front or to the side, it would know whether it was safe to move backwards or whether it was going to hit a fish or another coralbot. (ICRF 360) (How burglar alarms work)
Yet another technology used in the coralbot is the video camera, which will allow people on board a boat to supervise the coralbot’s progress and intervene if anything goes wrong because the coralbot’s camera will be sending a live video to a laptop by converting the images to electricity that are transferred into radio waves which are picked up by the computer and then transferred back into electricity and then into a pixelated video.
The benefits of using the coralbots as opposed to the diver are that it can dive deeper than the meagre 200 metres that divers could. (Scots universities win funding for robotics research) This is an improvement because coralbots will be able to repair the deep water reefs while before we had to just leave them to grow themselves which would normally decades while now with the intervention of the coralbots, it should only take a few days to a week. As well as this, the coralbots should be able to work together better than divers with the revolutionary invention of swarm technology which enables them to communicate finds instantly so the other robots can come and assist. As well as this, coralbots will work faster than the divers and so be more efficient. And because of this speed, they should be able to make the reefs grow quicker as they will be able to get more done. As well as this, the individual corals will grow quicker with the coralbots- taking a week with divers a whilst only taking a few days with the coralbot. Another benefit of using a coralbot is that it does not require a wage.
The consequences of using a coralbot as opposed to divers are that professional divers will have to be fired to make way for the revolutionary coralbot which is bad for the economy because it means that there are more people unemployed. As well as this, a coralbot can break and if it malfunctions past the 200 metre mark then divers will not be able to fetch it without a submarine which would cost a lot of money to rent. Also, the coralbot project needs a lot of money to fund and start while divers do not- they only require a wage. Also, the project will always need a supervision team and their wages will be quite expensive because you would need professionals in the reef ecosystem such as marine biologists and also professionals in swarm technology and robotics who all will require a quite high wage. Also, we know that using divers works but we do not know that using a coralbot in a real-life situation will even work as it has only been tested in controlled environments such as a swimming pool.

By Fraser Bohm 9 C
There is also the issue of whether the coralbot will even help the environment- are we destroying the reef too quickly to repair it? It is vital we protect reefs because if we do not then all coral reefs will be extinct by 2050 and ¼ of the marine wildlife on the planet will be killed and so ocean biodiversity will drop by a major amount. (Coralbots will restore and rebuild damaged coral reefs)
Without the reefs, many rich and beautiful ecosystems will collapse. In answer to the question I asked at the start of this paragraph, I think that if we reduce the rate of reef destruction then it is highly likely that with our help and protection they will grow and continue to live and so will not be destroyed. But if we do not do anything to save them then they will die and with them so will many country’s economy as much of the tourism in Australia, Egypt or any other major reef country as much of the tourism industry there is to see the reef and its rich diversity of marine life. And with this lack of coral reefs unemployment levels in the coral reef countries will rise due to the jobs being lost in that industry. This is how it will affect us. As well as this, the large range of holidays we were able to take will lessen. All the seaside snorkelling resorts will lose out on much of the income. As well as this, people who rely on the reefs for food or income will starve or become poorer. Also, the loss of coral reefs will increase the risk of coastal disaster. The coralbot will affect us because all of the terrible things just mentioned will be able to be avoided if we use the coralbot and reduce reef destruction.
In conclusion to the essay question, I think that the coralbot will affect us and the environment greatly if used with other methods such as reducing the amount of destructive reef fishing and dredging. The coralbot and reducing the amount of dredging and destructive fishing will affect us greatly because it means that the whole industries and jobs that rely on reef survival will be able to stay intact thus helping the countries who have these industries and keeping a large part of their economy alive. Also it will affect people who go on holidays because they will be able to go to the reefs and enjoy themselves while pouring money into that country who they are visiting’s economy.
The coralbot could also affect us because it could prevent a major coastal disaster from happening because the reefs will be there to take the main force of it. Also, people who rely on the animals that live off the reef will not have to go hungry because their main food source is not there anymore. The coralbot will affect the environment because it will mean that ¼ of marine wildlife will still be alive and the diversity of the planet’s wildlife will remain as large. As well as this, many amazing ecosystems will be enabled to continue to live.
(n.d.).
360 degree proimity sensor . (n.d.). Retrieved from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRCF360
Ant robotics . (n.d.). Retrieved from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_robotics
Coralbots will restore and rebuild damaged coral reefs . (n.d.). Retrieved from techhive.com: http://www.techhive.com/article/2038484/coralbots-will-restore-and-rebuild-damagedcoral-reefs.html electric infrared emitter . (n.d.). Retrieved from Google: http://www.google.co.uk/patents/US3307017

By Fraser Bohm 9 C
Eric Fossum . (n.d.). Retrieved from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Fossum
How burglar alarms work . (n.d.). Retrieved from how stuff works: http://home.howstuffworks.com/home-improvement/household-safety/security/burglaralarm2.htm
ICRF 360 . (n.d.). Retrieved from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRCF360
Scots universities win funding for robotics research . (n.d.). Retrieved from BBC news: http://www.bbc.co.uk/uk-scotland-23332184