News Topic: AI Special - Coral Reef Restoration

This week at PARN we are focussing on AI in preparation of our Research Roundtable on the 26th September.

A free to attend virtual event where you can join in the discussion. Taking this further, if you want to be instrumental in shaping the next in depth research project, and the direction it heads in, you can become part of the consortium too. Please email Robert Pitts (by clicking here) to have a chat if this is of interest to your organisation. Alternatively, please email PARN General Enquiries with any questions or comments regarding the event.

To kick us off and get us thinking about AI, this piece featured in this weeks Sector News.

Did you know that robots are currently being trained to help revive coral reefs?

Well, that is what Coral Maker is doing over in Australia. They are partnering with Autodesk to develop means of restoring depleting coral habitats.

Typically, corals are slow to grow, and by utilising manufacturing techniques on land and a design that mimics that of a natural coral colony, Coral Maker can provide a suitable foundation for coral growth through propagation.

The first prototype is a dome-shaped ‘skeleton’ which has six plugs where living coral fragments are grafted. These are then placed in batches on the seabed and allow new corals to bypass several years of growth, speeding up the recovery process.

The use of AI makes the project scalable, as automation of the labour intensive and repetitive tasks would mean that nearly 300,000 ‘skeletons’ could be produced and placed on the seabed each year, far more than current manual techniques allow.

This is a great example of where AI can be used to mitigate the effects of climate change in the real world.