"Oceanographers and engineers at the University of California San Diego collaborated to modify a common physical...
Originally shared by Azimuth
"Oceanographers and engineers at the University of California San Diego collaborated to modify a common physical oceanography instrument to be able to image zooplankton as it glides through the ocean.
The robot, dubbed Zooglider, uses as its platform a Scripps-developed glider known as Spray. Ohman and Scripps instrument developers outfitted the torpedo-shaped Spray gliders with a camera (called Zoocam) and a device researchers call Zonar that gathers acoustic data about zooplankton – free-drifting microscopic marine animals – in the manner of a sonar instrument. This promises a priceless view of how marine life is responding to climate change.
Co-author Jeffrey Ellen from UC San Diego's Jacobs School of Engineering is creating methods by which Zooglider image data can be analyzed through machine learning.
Zooglider can acquire images of zooplankton every five centimeters (two inches) to depths of 400 meters (1,300 feet) or more as it channels seawater into an on-board sampling tunnel. The new instrument represents a breakthrough in that it enables observations of microscopic life in its habitat and provides information about that life in spatial context. This advances scientists' ability to acquire quantitative data about microscopic life within defined areas, a fundamental pursuit of biological oceanographers who study how marine organisms interact with and are influenced by the physics and chemistry of their surroundings.
"Nearly all major processes in the ocean – carbon cycling, fisheries production, harmful algal blooms, ocean acidification, deoxygenation – are linked directly to the free-drifting animals of the open sea, the zooplankton," said Scripps biological oceanographer Mark Ohman. (This is our first window on their world through a completely autonomous vehicle. We're excited by the new opportunities Zooglider offers to visualize and understand these organisms, unperturbed in their natural environment)."
(Posted by rasha kamel )
https://phys.org/news/2019-01-robot-plankton-optically-acoustically.html
"Oceanographers and engineers at the University of California San Diego collaborated to modify a common physical oceanography instrument to be able to image zooplankton as it glides through the ocean.
The robot, dubbed Zooglider, uses as its platform a Scripps-developed glider known as Spray. Ohman and Scripps instrument developers outfitted the torpedo-shaped Spray gliders with a camera (called Zoocam) and a device researchers call Zonar that gathers acoustic data about zooplankton – free-drifting microscopic marine animals – in the manner of a sonar instrument. This promises a priceless view of how marine life is responding to climate change.
Co-author Jeffrey Ellen from UC San Diego's Jacobs School of Engineering is creating methods by which Zooglider image data can be analyzed through machine learning.
Zooglider can acquire images of zooplankton every five centimeters (two inches) to depths of 400 meters (1,300 feet) or more as it channels seawater into an on-board sampling tunnel. The new instrument represents a breakthrough in that it enables observations of microscopic life in its habitat and provides information about that life in spatial context. This advances scientists' ability to acquire quantitative data about microscopic life within defined areas, a fundamental pursuit of biological oceanographers who study how marine organisms interact with and are influenced by the physics and chemistry of their surroundings.
"Nearly all major processes in the ocean – carbon cycling, fisheries production, harmful algal blooms, ocean acidification, deoxygenation – are linked directly to the free-drifting animals of the open sea, the zooplankton," said Scripps biological oceanographer Mark Ohman. (This is our first window on their world through a completely autonomous vehicle. We're excited by the new opportunities Zooglider offers to visualize and understand these organisms, unperturbed in their natural environment)."
(Posted by rasha kamel )
https://phys.org/news/2019-01-robot-plankton-optically-acoustically.html
That's actually really cool piece of technology.
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