JEROS, or Jellyfish Elimination Robotic Swarm, is a team of 3
robots designed to patrol the surface of the ocean, using a combination of GIS
(geographic information system), GPS, and INS (inertial navigation system) to
execute search-and-destroy missions on (you guessed it!) jellyfish.
Jellyfish are becoming an increasingly more common and especially more
serious problem these days. There
are numerous reports ranging from a swarm that attack a nuclear reactor in
Sweden last weekend by clogging the cooling pipes, wrecking fisheries in the
Black Sea, and even shutting down the USS Ronald Reagan at one point by
clogging it as well.
It is undeniable that the jellyfish population and their behavior
is becoming a very serious problem, and current methods of extraction or
elimination are expensive and slow, so a Korean team of scientists developed
this JEROS system to combat them. JEROS
is literally a killing machine. It’s a
swarm of 3 robots that go around netting jellyfish, sucking them into spinning
blades of death, and violently chopping them up into little tiny pieces of
sea-mulch, and the videos are a little creepy:
This
is certainly a novel idea, an effective one, even a relatively cheap one. It gets the job done pretty easily, and most
people are pretty happy with it, but the reason I bring it all up is because it
made me think of something. It’s all
sort of a question of morality. There
used to be an unbelievable amount of heated debate over the use of drones
whether in the Middle East or even sometimes here back home in the United
States, and how immoral they are, or inhumane, because people are removed from
the equation, it’s just a robot doing a task and killing a target that is doing
a bad thing. Well, is that not what
JEROS is? Sure you could say they’re an
infestation, a terrible problem that needs to be dealt with and fixed as soon and
efficiently as possible, but could you not say the same about any attack made
by a drone (well maybe not the infestation part, that’s just a little harsh)?
Is
it even a humane thing to do? People
killed by drone strikes are (I can only assume) killed instantly in one instant
fiery explosion, probably no pain, it’s just over. JEROS slices and dices up these jellyfish
which I can only assume would be incredibly painful for any more “normal”
creature. Do jellyfish even feel pain? Do we simply not care because they’re not
cute and fuzzy like puppies or kittens?
It certainly seems a little inhumane to me, at least.
The
thing is, in the end, I’d probably agree with most that this is the best option
and something we should continue to move forward with, because they truly are
an infestation in a way and if we don’t do something, they’ll continue to wreak
havoc here and there, and even possibly continue to deplete the ocean’s oxygen
supply (although there is apparently some debate among scientists if this is
actually the case).
We’ve
already pretty much forgotten about drones, whether because of America’s
roughly 1-2 week attention span on any important issue, or because we’re
distracted by the enacting of the Affordable Care Act or the government shut
down over the same law. Even then, with
all the hubbub and hoopla people gave about it, nobody really did anything
besides a few hearings that went nowhere, as far as I’m aware. But if we’re okay with that, and we’re okay
with JEROS, what’s next?
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