COTSBot is a small intelligent underwater craft long, which is designed by

Queensland University of Technology Queensland University of Technology (QUT) is a public research university located in the urban coastal city of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. QUT is located on two campuses in the Brisbane area viz. Gardens Point and Kelvin Grove. The univ ...

(QUT) to kill the very destructive

crown of thorns starfish The crown-of-thorns starfish (frequently abbreviated to COTS), ''Acanthaster planci'', is a large starfish that preys upon hard, or stony, coral polyps (Scleractinia). The crown-of-thorns starfish receives its name from venomous thorn-like spine ...

in the

Great Barrier Reef The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef system composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching for over over an area of approximately . The reef is located in the Coral Sea, off the coast of Queensland, ...

off the north-east coast of Australia. It identifies its target using an image-analyzing

neural net Artificial neural networks (ANNs), usually simply called neural networks (NNs) or neural nets, are computing systems inspired by the biological neural networks that constitute animal brains. An ANN is based on a collection of connected units ...

to analyze what an onboard camera sees, and then lethal-injects the starfish with

bile salts Bile acids are steroid acids found predominantly in the bile of mammals and other vertebrates. Diverse bile acids are synthesized in the liver. Bile acids are conjugated with taurine or glycine residues to give anions called bile salts. Primary b ...

or similar using a needle on the end of a long underslung foldable arm. It uses

GPS The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of the global navigation satellite sy ...

to navigate. The first version was created in the early 2000s with an accuracy rate of about 65%. After training COTSBot with

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

its accuracy rate rose to 99% by 2019. COTSBot is capable of killing 200 crown of thorns starfish with its two liters capacity of poison. COTSBot is capable of performing about 20 runs per day, but multiple COTSBots will be necessary to significantly impact the crown of thorns starfish populations. A smaller version of COTSBot called "RangerBot" is also being developed by QUT.RangerBot
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References

External links

Google search for images
*https://wiki.qut.edu.au/download/attachments/192519759/COTSBot_V2_Poster.png?version=1&modificationDate=1441116020000&api=v2
image
*http://robotglobe.org/cotsbot-to-protect-great-barrier-reef-from-invading-starfish/cotsbot2/ *https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-cAwubAfSU *https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS3EpYfeJAk
image of the robot
Robotic submarines Pest control {{robot-stub