Aquatic environments cover approximately 80% of the Earth and are critical for maintaining ecological balance and supporting human well-being. Effective conservation requires a thorough understanding of aquatic species distributions and ecosystem dynamics, which is time-consuming and expensive.
Funded by the National Science Foundation, a team of researchers at the Minnesota Interactive Robotics & Vision Laboratory aims to overcome these challenges by developing advanced autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) equipped with artificial intelligence to collect vast amounts of data, provide detailed insights into species distributions, and create comprehensive habitat maps to understand environmental factors.
These innovations will be tested on a new AUV platform, MeCO, which is equipped with multiple sensors and modular components. The team hopes to accurately identify and track invasive species such as Eurasian water bug and various seaweeds that are common in Minnesota lakes.
Credit: Junayed Sutter, University of Minnesota
“Our project is about making underwater robots a more effective tool for scientists and conservationists. With improved vision and localization capabilities, these robots can better understand and protect underwater environments that are crucial to ecological balance and human thriving,” said Junayed Sutter, an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota and the Minnesota Robotics Institute, and the project's principal investigator.
MeCO is an open-source project, and the researchers hope to release it to the research community and the public under an open-source license soon.
This innovative research project will significantly advance the fields of oceanography and underwater environmental science, providing powerful new tools for the conservation and management of important aquatic ecosystems.
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