Abstract
Coral reef degradation has been a major threat to our marine ecosystem. As a remedy to this rising issue, through the collaboration between RISC Lab and the Laboratory for Nanomedicine at KAUST, an innovative solution for coral reef restoration combining robotics and bioprinting technologies is being developed. The key concepts, system development, and demonstration of an earlier iteration of our system will be presented and how the new solution improves the restoration capacity in terms of scale, effectiveness, and cost-efficiency will be discussed.
The system consists of two manipulators (robotic arms) and novel computational models are designed to compute time-efficient automated process of coral 3D printing. Recent advancement of natural eco-friendly materials for coral restoration and its adoption to 3D printing technology will be presented. As a part of the presentation, 3D printing of coral models will be demonstrated using manipulators in the Laboratory for Nanomedicine.