A robotic microplankton sniffer dog

[Judi Lynn]

The microscopic, free-floating algae called phytoplankton — and the tiny zooplankton that eat them — are notoriously difficult to count. Researchers need to know how a warming climate will affect them both. A new kind of smart, lightweight autonomous underwater vehicle (LAUV) can help.

Nancy Bazilchuk
COMMUNICATIONS ADVISOR

Presented by:
NTNU - NORWEGIAN UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Friday 02. July 2021 - 06:00

Marine phytoplankton, or plant plankton, are incredibly important to life on Earth. As they go about their work of turning sunlight into energy, they produce fully 50 per cent of the oxygen we breathe.

It’s no wonder that researchers want to know what climate change and a warming ocean might do to these tiny floating oxygen factories, especially since they serve as the basis of marine food webs and thus support the production of zooplankton and fish.

But counting and identifying plankton is incredibly hard. It’s like looking for a zillion tiny needles in an enormous haystack — except that both the haystack and the needles are constantly moving around in the vast reaches of the ocean, and over space and time.

Now, an interdisciplinary collaboration between NTNU researchers and their colleagues from SINTEF Ocean is developing a smart robotic lightweight autonomous underwater vehicle (LAUV) that’s programmed to find and identify different groups of plankton.

. . .



The star of the show: The lightweight autonomous underwater vehicle on a workbench, before deployment. (Photo: Annecken Nøland)

More:
https://partner.sciencenorway.no/climate-change-environment-marine-biology/a-robotic-microplankton-sniffer-dog/1876808

[abqtommy]

1. Looks more like a torpedo to me but I can appreciate the "dog" analogy.