Robot Reviews

If there are gigantic robots created to save the world ala Autobots of Transformers fame, then there are also tiny robots tasked to capture life in miniature form. Well at least there will be as soon as the marine scientists of Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California are finished building them!

While seafaring robots are not uncommon and in fact, are being widely used to evaluate large-scale processes including tidal patterns and the ocean's chemical makeup, utilizing these tiny robots called autonomous underwater explorers or AUEs, will be a first. AUEs will be fielded mainly to study vital nursery habitats for fish, track algal blooms, and determine the fine details of oceanographic systems which can prove to be critical for tiny sea inhabitants.

Spearheaded by Peter Franks and Jules Jaffe, the project is made possible by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Ocean Sciences' nearly $1 million research grant awarded to Scripps Institution.

"AUEs will give us information to figure out how small organisms survive, how they move in the ocean, and the physical dynamics they experience as they get around," said Franks.

Other than exploring small-scale ecosystems, the AUEs could also prove to be instrumental in uncovering useful information for environmental concerns such as monitoring oil spills, or in spot applications like tracking currents to determine where a black box may be located and retrieved from the wreckage caused by an airplane crash in the ocean.

"AUEs will fill in gaps between existing marine technologies. They will provide a whole new kind of information," said Jaffe.

According to the NSF website, the Scripps scientists and oceanographers will be designing a handful of soccer ball-sized explorers, together with possibly hundreds of diminutive partner bots. The larger explorers will set out alongside the tiny AUEs, and together, the whole swarm will track ocean currents and record information.