SBIR Phase II: Robotic Coral Reef Restoration

SBIR第二阶段项目的更广泛影响将是解决珊瑚礁退化的速度问题。据估计，所有珊瑚礁中有一半已经消失。目前的恢复工作每年可恢复约1公顷，而世界每年损失约100万公顷的珊瑚礁。该项目的目标是扩大世界各地的珊瑚恢复能力，使其达到与珊瑚死亡率同步的水平。通过这个项目，开发自动化珊瑚种植系统将消除限制珊瑚种植速度的体力劳动，大幅提高珊瑚礁恢复工作的工人生产力。这一发展将使建造低成本的播种机船队重新种植受损的珊瑚礁成为可能。它还将促进广泛应用关于珊瑚健康的知识和增强复原力，这是在不断变化的海洋气候中保持珊瑚存活所必需的。然后，健康的珊瑚礁可以为食物物种提供栖息地，为海岸线提供物质保护，并为以旅游为基础的经济提供收入。该项目的重点是开发一种自动珊瑚种植系统，以快速将珊瑚附着在退化的珊瑚礁上。主要的技术创新是提供物理安装工具包和在混乱的浅水环境中导航的能力，以便车辆每小时可以种植数百个珊瑚。建议的主要技术方向是使用近乎中性的浮力水下机器人来导航珊瑚礁和执行种植操作。这辆车将从苗圃运送一盘盘珊瑚，并有一个内部珊瑚管理系统，将它们喂入播种机。当车辆使用惯性、声学导航和视觉传感器的组合选择了合适的种植位置后，它将清除表面的碎石和藻类，钻一个洞，并将珊瑚插入洞中，永久地附着在洞上。每辆车极大地提高了操作员的种植速度。由于自主行为通过该项目实施，每个操作员将能够处理车队，将珊瑚种植率提高到开始解决珊瑚损失率的水平。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact of this SBIR Phase II project will be to address the rate of coral reef degradation. An estimated half of all coral reefs have already been lost. Current restoration efforts can restore on the order of one hectare per year while the world is losing on the order of one million hectares of reef per year. The goal of this project is to scale up coral restoration capacity worldwide to a level that keeps pace with the rate of coral mortality. Through this project, development of an automated coral planting system will remove the rate-limiting manual labor from coral out-planting, providing a dramatic increase in worker productivity in reef restoration. This development will enable construction of low-cost fleets of planters to repopulate damaged coral reefs. It will also promote widespread application of knowledge about coral health and enhanced resilience, needed to keep corals alive in a changing ocean climate. Healthy reefs then can provide habitat for food species, physical protection for coastlines, and income for tourism-based economies. The focus of this project is development of an automated coral planting system to rapidly attach corals to a degraded reef. The major technical innovation is to provide both a physical installation toolset and navigation capability in a chaotic shallow water environment such that the vehicle can plant hundreds of corals per hour. The primary technical direction proposed is to use a nearly neutrally buoyant underwater vehicle to navigate the reef and perform the planting operations. The vehicle will carry trays of corals from nurseries and have an internal coral management system to feed them into a planter. When the vehicle has selected a suitable planting location using a combination of inertial and acoustic navigation and vision sensors, it will clear a surface of rubble and algae, drill a hole, and insert a coral into the hole, permanently attaching it. Each vehicle greatly multiplies the planting rate of an operator. As autonomous behaviors are implemented through this project, each operator will be able to handle fleets of vehicles, raising coral planting rates to a level that begins addressing the rate of coral loss.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.