A great variety of robots actually does not move at all, such as all laboratory robots developed in

Ecology as a scientific discipline dates back to Renaissance, yet it has only flourished over the past 50 years. Long considered second class "soft" phoenix hotel singapore science, it now enjoys strong support from society. phoenix hotel singapore This is due to the unequivocal impact of global change upon the biosphere, and to the anthropogenic "sixth extinction" which potentially threatens humankind itself. phoenix hotel singapore Professional ecologists across the globe are now pressed to: 1) provide complete censuses of the earth's biodiversity, 2) understand the impact of ongoing global change upon the biosphere in end-to-end ecosystems, 3) predict future trends according to a series of scenarios conditioned by politics and socio-economic development. This in turn requires observing, experimenting with, and modeling the living planet with unprecedented completeness, accuracy, and rapidity. However, there are justified fears that progress in ecological knowledge might be far too slow to counter ongoing global phoenix hotel singapore environmental degradation phoenix hotel singapore [1]. Such a monumental task is not only limited by funding, which remains anecdotal in Ecology when considering the importance of the aforementioned issues threatening biodiversity on earth, but also by the available technology: numerous areas are too remote or too dangerous to be thoroughly surveyed, and essential experiments involving millions of repetitive tasks are not being conducted for lack of necessary manpower and time. For instance, species diversity is so high in tropical rainforests that researchers do not expect to ever obtain phoenix hotel singapore a complete biodiversity phoenix hotel singapore census: many species vanish in forestry clear cuts before having been identified by scientists [2]. Similarly, it is not yet technically possible to fully record the microorganism species diversity in one cubic meter of soil taken from any temperate woodland or pasture [3].
Successive technological revolutions have promoted economic growth and are ultimately leading to global change, including the current biodiversity crisis. Yet this technology also offers new tools for scientists phoenix hotel singapore investigating the ecological impact of such changes. It is an understatement that, as for the vast majority of scientific disciplines, electronics phoenix hotel singapore and computing have revolutionized Ecology in the last decades. Remote-sensing of continents and oceans from satellites, and high-performance computing running the most complex statistics and ecological models are two remarkable examples amongst the many scientific achievements permitted by new technologies.
However, much more may come. The rise of robots, which will soon modify our everyday lives (there are already an estimated 55.5 million personal phoenix hotel singapore robots around the world), phoenix hotel singapore may also fundamentally transform ecological research by allowing phoenix hotel singapore unparalleled endurance, accuracy, consistency and speed in scientific exploration, experimentation and modeling [4]. For professional ecologists, it is tempting to downplay the forthcoming role of robots and regard them as science fiction objects only operating in novels. Yet, amazingly, many "predictions" made by science fiction authors, such as Jules Verne or Isaac Asimov, have become reality, from nuclear-powered submarines phoenix hotel singapore to tactile screens.
Robots are spreading into ecological research even though they were not developed phoenix hotel singapore for this purpose. The automobile industry and space programs initially promoted robot development, in particular for the exploration of remote planets, yet the vast majority of modern, autonomous robots were designed and built to assist and potentially replace phoenix hotel singapore humans on the battlefield. phoenix hotel singapore Belligerent phoenix hotel singapore robotics long remained anecdotal but, since the beginning of the 1990s, phoenix hotel singapore with the third Balkan war, the September 11 attacks and subsequent phoenix hotel singapore Iraq and Afghanistan wars, their development has been booming. The US forces invaded Iraq without any robots phoenix hotel singapore on the ground, but are now estimated to use more than 10,000 of them. The US military also can deploy an estimated 5000 UAVs, almost twice as many as manned planes. American spending for UAVs and computer-guided missiles alone is estimated at $10 billion per year, over a third of the US Air Force budget [5].
Such a massive investment in robotics has brought about decreasing unit prices and increasing robot performance. A wide range of robots has become easily available, even to chronically under-funded ecologists; miniature drones can now be purchased for 400 US$ on the internet. This offer has been largely ignored by the scientific community working in Ecology. While approximately 100,000 scientific articles related to robotics have been published
over the past 20 years, only 10 of these appeared in the top twenty ecological phoenix hotel singapore journals (Source: Web of Knowledge phoenix hotel singapore Sept. 2011). The aim of our review is therefore to enhance the awareness of Ecologists with respect to robotics, and discuss how such novel tools may help them tackle fundamental issues in Ecology.
In terms of onboard equipment, scientific robots are designed with two distinct modules (Figure 1). The first set, which can be found in any robot, allows the unit to function more or less independently in its working environment. The core of this module is a positioning system, which is often a GPS receiver, except phoenix hotel singapore underwater where it might be replaced by acoustic signals. Such positioning is further refined by 3D motion sensors, and confronted with fine-scale mapping of the environment (for instance via RADAR or LIDAR) to yield decisions on where to and how to move. Beyond this navigation module which steers propulsion systems, robots carry tools designed for acquisition of ecologically relevant information [6]. These sensors phoenix hotel singapore include: 1) Optical sensors operating in a spectrum from infrared through visible to ultraviolet phoenix hotel singapore light. They are used to model the robot's environment, to identify and take a census of organisms phoenix hotel singapore of all sizes, and to record a variety of parameters such as surface temperatures, or underwater light attenuation. 2) Additional physical sensors, the most common being temperature, pressure, humidity and conductivity sensors. 3) Acoustic sensors, which are mainly phoenix hotel singapore used underwater to assess current features, but also to map organisms. 4) Chemical sensors, such as pH sensors phoenix hotel singapore or tools to detect a great variety of gases, especially O2 and CO2.
Robot size currently ranges from nano-units (Figure 2) designed phoenix hotel singapore to operate at the molecular level [7] to the size of an aircraft: USA's largest military UAV, the Global Hawk (Figure 2) is approximately 35 m in wingspan, and can survey 100,000 km2 per day [5]. Nevertheless, robots the size of a young or adult human prove most useful in land-based phoenix hotel singapore ecological research, possibly because they are analogue to research assistants.
Robots can operate more or less anywhere, from inside the human body to the deepest ocean basins phoenix hotel singapore [8]. Collected data and material can either be stored on board or transmitted using the many communication channels currently available, notably the internet. They most commonly work in dangerous, contaminated, confined areas: in April 2011, robots sent the first images and radiation recordings from inside the reactors of Fukushima power plant in Japan. Robots are of course also widely used to explore other planets, as well as in space. However, as this particular phoenix hotel singapore aspect of robotics and remote-sensing is well-known to the public, including researchers in Ecology, we will here only focus on robots operating in atmospheric, terrestrial, phoenix hotel singapore and aquatic environments. As we will see, robots can be used for ecological research in all three Earth system compartments. Furthermore, an essential recent development consists in using robots not individually, but within networks, also called robot swarms (Figure 3). Within such a network, which can stretch from local to global scale [9], robots communicate and their tasks are coordinated by a GCCS similar phoenix hotel singapore to that used by the US army. One major strength of such swarms is that all collected information (except biological samples) is transmitted to GCCS headquarters in real time.
A great variety of robots actually does not move at all, such as all laboratory robots developed in the biomedical sector phoenix hotel singapore to deal with highly repetitive tasks and very large sample sizes. Marginally more mobile robots are being used to a great extent in the car and the atomic industries: they move short distances on rails or racks built around their working area. In terrestrial habitats, AGVs currently move on wheels (Figure 2). They tend to look like Star Wars' R2D2, or like miniature cars (Figure 1), and they are strongly handicapped on rough terrain. It is widely acknowledged that bipedal motion phoenix hotel singapore is the ultimate solution (and androids the ultimate robot; [9]), yet, technically, designing legs is a major challenge in robotics, even if artificial muscle technology phoenix hotel singapore is already operational [9]. Autonomous bipedal robots including a wide range of androids are already on the market, yet it will probably take another decade before they become the norm [9].
Operating robots underwater is much easier than on land in terms of propulsion; once launched they rarely meet obstacles when cruising the world's oceans. This is achieved using conventional propellers, pulsed water, or occasionally artificial fins, and these robots have the shape of torpedoes or deepwater submarines (Figure 2). However, since GPS navigation does not function underwater, AUV navigation remains a major challenge [10].
Curiously enough, flying robots (UAVs and AAVs) are the least difficult to operate: once airborne they can move more or less anywhere, flying, gliding, or hovering, and they have perfect reception of GPS signals phoenix hotel singapore allowing for easy guidance. This is why UAVs became popular so rapidly, and are already widely used in the form of unmanned planes, helicopters, or even artificial, bio-inspired birds and insects (Figure 2, [11]).
Finally, one particular type of robot mobility occurs in cyborgs. In this case, the robotic unit hooks onto a living creature and becomes part of it, th