Scientists from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Daejeon, South Korea have built a "jellyfish terminator" robot also known as JEROS, or Jellyfish Elimination Robotic Swarm that can not only detect the fish species but eliminate them, according to an intitute press release.
"Once jellyfish are detected using a camera, the jellyfish removal scenario is started with generating efficient path to remove the jellyfish," team leader professor Myung Hyun told the scientific journal, Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing. "Finally, the jellyfish is sliced up with the grid installed underneath the JEROS by following the generated path."
The development comes after a swarm of jellyfish forced officials to shut off a nuclear reactor at the Oskarshamn Nuclear Power Plant in southeastern Sweden. The jellyfish stopped up the pipes that deliver cool water to the plant's turbines.The Diablo Canyon Power Plant in California had a similar jellyfish problem in 2012 after it had to be shut down after sea salp or a species that looks like a jellyfish blocked intake pipes on its second reactor. A few years earlier, Oskarshamn had to be shut off completely because of another swarm of jellyfish.
The species has also been known to sting people, and harm seaside cities and towns
"The assembly robots maintain a set formation pattern, while calculating its course to perform jellyfish extermination," KAIST said in the press release."The advantage of this method is that there is no need for individual control of the robots. Only the leader robot requires the calculated path, and the other robots can simply follow in a formation by exchanging their location information via wireless communication."
The institutes efforts have been successful so far as nearly 2,000 pounds of jellyfish have been decimated Slate.com reported.
