'Forabot' Can Do a Boring but Important Job

Meet 'Forabot,' the robot capable of sorting, manipulating, and identifying marine fossils — a boring but important process that advances our understanding of the world's oceans and climate.

“The beauty of this technology is that it is made using relatively inexpensive off-the-shelf components, and we are making both the designs and the artificial intelligence software open source,” says Edgar Lobaton , co-author of a paper on the work and an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at North Carolina State University. “Our goal is to make this tool widely accessible, so that it can be used by as many researchers as possible to advance our understanding of oceans, biodiversity and climate.”