“Nearly a dozen miles off the California coast on a foggy October morning, a crane lifts a boxy yellow robot off the deck of the research vessel Rachel Carson and lowers it into Monterey Bay’s choppy gunmetal-gray waters. The remotely operated vehicle bristling with cameras and lights remains tethered to the ship by an unspooling cable but artificial intelligence has given it a mind of its own.
Descending to a depth of 200 meters (656 feet), the robot called MiniROV beams back images of a rarely seen jellyfish to a wall of video screens lining a cramped control room aboard the ship. Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute principal engineer Kakani Katija lightly grips a pair of joysticks, maneuvering MiniROV closer to the tiny and translucent critter swimming through a marine snowstorm of organic particles falling to the seafloor.
Then senior electrical engineer Paul Roberts presses a key on a laptop and announces, ‘We’ve started agent tracking.’
The ‘agent’ is an AI program integrated into MiniROV’s control algorithms. It’s being deployed for the first time in the ocean, allowing the robot to autonomously locate and track marine organisms.”
From Bloomberg.