Now, tiny robots will study ocean life - Read how

New Delhi: Have you ever heard of robots who furnish details about oceans and ocean currents? Scientists have developed a swarm of tiny underwater robots to study ocean currents and ocean life and understand the movement of plankton - the most abundant life forms in the sea.

The miniature autonomous underwater explorers (M-AUEs) will study small-scale environmental processes taking place in the ocean.

The ocean-probing instruments are equipped with temperature and other sensors to measure the surrounding ocean conditions while the robots 'swim' up and down to maintain a constant depth by adjusting their buoyancy.

The M-AUEs could potentially be deployed in swarms of hundreds to thousands to capture a 3D view of the interactions between ocean currents and marine life.

Researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego in the US deployed a swarm of 16 grapefruit-sized underwater robots programmed to mimic the underwater swimming behaviour of plankton, the microscopic organisms that drift with the ocean currents.

The study was designed to test theories about how plankton form dense patches under the ocean surface, which often later reveal themselves at the surface as red tides.

(With PTI inputs)