At the Australian Institute of Marine Science, artificial intelligence is being leveraged to help restore coral reefs after recent bleaching events.

Following the autumn spawning season on the Great Barrier Reef, AIMS scientists are looking to give the corals a helping hand by dropping coral larvae down onto degraded reef segments.

But in an effort that would be “near impossible” to achieve with human decision making and labor alone, a robotic assistant called the Deployment Guidance System (DGS) scans the seafloor and determines the best place for a coral to spawn before dropping small ceramic coral analogues down to within 3 feet of the targeted area.

Image: Hiroko Yoshii, Unsplash