Coral Reef Restoration Robot CoralBot Deployed on the Great Barrier Reef: An Underwater Gardener That Autonomously Plants and Monitors Coral

Coral Reef Restoration Robot CoralBot Deployed on the Great Barrier Reef: An Underwater Gardener That Autonomously Plants and Monitors Coral

The Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) today released CoralBot, a coral reef restoration robot. This small underwater robot weighs approximately 25 kilograms and can autonomously select suitable substrate positions on the seafloor, affix laboratory-cultivated coral fragments to reef structures, and continuously monitor their growth and health.

CoralBot is equipped with an underwater robotic arm, multispectral camera, and water quality sensors. When planting coral, the robot analyzes the substrate's hardness, orientation, water flow, and lighting conditions to select the optimal planting position. Each CoralBot can plant 200 coral fragments per day, 10 times the efficiency of manual planting.

Dr. Mary Mapstone, coral ecologist at AIMS, said: "The Great Barrier Reef has lost more than half its living coral over the past 30 years. Manual planting speeds simply cannot keep pace with coral bleaching. CoralBot gives us the opportunity to conduct reef restoration at an industrial scale."

Currently, 50 CoralBot units are deployed on the Great Barrier Reef, having planted a cumulative 120,000 coral fragments with an 82% survival rate. The robots also handle long-term monitoring — performing health scans of planted coral every two weeks, with data transmitted in real time to an AI analysis platform.

The CoralBot project has received A$150 million in Australian government funding, with plans to expand deployment to 500 units by 2032, covering 10 key areas of the Great Barrier Reef.