PRE2019 3 Group17

Group Members

Name	ID	Email	Major
Amit Gelbhart	1055213	a.gelbhart@student.tue.nl	Sustainable Innovation
Marleen Luijten	1326732	m.luijten2@student.tue.nl	Industrial Design
Myrthe Spronck	1330268	m.s.c.spronck@student.tue.nl	Computer Science
Ilvy Stoots	1329707	i.n.j.stoots@student.tue.nl	Industrial Design
Linda Tawafra	0941352	l.tawafra@student.tue.nl	Industrial Design

Work Breakdown

Work Breakdown per Group Member per Week

	Week 1		Week 2		Week 3
Name	Total Hours	Work Breakdown	Total Hours	Work Breakdown	Total Hours	Work Breakdown
Amit Gelbhart
Marleen Luijten
Myrthe Spronck
Ilvy Stoots
Linda Tawafra

Problem Statement and Objectives

Problem Statement

“Coral reefs worldwide are increasingly damaged by anthropogenic stressors”(Gordon, et al., 2019). We look towards alternative methods of reviving dying and dead coral reefs. Acoustic enrichment is a tested method that seems to be able to bring fish back to coral reefs. Robots could be created to automate labor and time-intensive work, as well as remove the skill floor required to revive a local reef.

Objectives

The main objective of the robot is to prevent reefs from downgrading by improving the coral reefs resilience and bring back dead coral reefs through attracting fish. Additionally, the robot helps with monitoring and managing coral reefs by automating manual labor and improving data efficiency.

Prevent downgrading

Due to climate change, and …… (SOURCE MYRTHE) the number of coral reefs is declining. One of the factors that could prevent the downgrading of a reef, is the resilience of a reef (SOURCE MYRTHE). If the reef has better resilience, it will be able to better withstand downgrading or bounce back quicker (SOURCE MYRTHE). The robot improves the resilience of the reef by …. increasing biodiversity?/ maintaining biodiversity? (SOURCE????).

Bring back dead coral reefs

For a coral reef to flourish, the wide biodiversity of animals is needed. Fish that lay their larvae on corals are one of the essential components in a healthy reef ecosystem. However, once corals are dying, the fish do not use them for their larvae and the whole system ends up in a negative cycle. By playing sounds, with different frequencies, fish are tricked into believing that the corals are alive and come back with their larvae. This attracts other marine animals, which causes the entire system to flourish again (SOURCE!!).

Monitor and manage coral reefs

The monitoring of coral reefs nowadays is a time consuming and cumbersome method, which requires a lot of manual activities (SOURCE!!). The robot is able to scan reefs and provide researchers with an accurate and continuous database regarding the status of the coral and the population of fish and other marine animals. This reduces the number of manual actions that otherwise would have been performed by divers and researchers. The database allows researchers to study reef ecosystems worldwide, which leads to a better understanding of the ecosystems and allows better management.

References

Gordon, T. A. C., Radford, A. N., Davidson, I. K., Barnes, K., Mccloskey, K., Nedelec, S. L., … Simpson, S. D. (2019). Acoustic enrichment can enhance fish community development on degraded coral reef habitat. Nature Communications, 10(1). doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-13186-2