AI-powered underwater robot helps scientists map corals

An artificial intelligence-powered underwater robot developed in Singapore is giving scientists a clear map of corals in the Republic's murky waters.

- Ang Qing Correspondent

The robot, created by a team from the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), can generate a low-resolution 3D digital twin of coral reefs within minutes, a process that would ordinarily take hours, said Assistant Professor Malika Meghjani, who leads the university's Multi-Agent Robotics Vision and Learning Lab.

Not only can the lab's underwater robot technology speed up the process of mapping corals, but it can also assess ship hulls and monitor the impact of oil spills, said Prof Meghjani at a media showcase on Sept 25 held by the International SeaKeepers Society Asia in the waters off Sentosa Cove, which brought together innovators tackling key marine challenges.

The map paves the way for marine biologists like Ms Sam Shu Qin to monitor the health of coral transplants at restoration sites and make quicker decisions about which areas to prioritise.

For Singapore's coral gardeners, tracking the health of reefs is a manual task of painstakingly photographing individual corals and piecing together the footage in a lab, a job made more tedious by clouds of sediment.

"Sometimes, it's so bad that all you can see is just a few centimetres in front of your face," said Ms Sam, who tends to the coral garden at Sentosa Cove, an initiative co-funded by the International SeaKeepers Society Asia, which promotes ocean research, conservation and education with the yachting community.