[LUM#8] A robot vacuum cleaner on the ocean floor
Under the guidance of Vincent Creuze, a researcher at Lirmm, and Sébastien Dutertre, a researcher at IBMM, Flipper, a robotic vacuum cleaner, scours the seabed in search of shellfish with very special properties.
Day or night, he criss-crosses the ocean depths, without worrying about his dive time or decompression stops. Agile and meticulous, he carefully picks shells from the seabed, without damaging their natural habitat. "He" is Flipper, a little jewel of technology developed by the Laboratoire d'informatique, de robotique et de microélectronique de Montpellier(LIRMM).
At the end of June 2017, a multidisciplinary team comprising Sébastien Dutertre, CNRS researcher at the Max Mousseron Biomolecules Institute and Vincent Creuze, CNRS researcher at LIRMM (CNRS) immersed the robot in the waters off Mayotte. The aim: to collect cone shells, whose venoms have unsuspected therapeutic properties. Flipper's mission was a success: the cones collected by the robot hold great promise for chemists. " The toxins in their venoms could be used to treat neurodegenerative diseases or myopathy," explains project leader Sébastien Dutertre.
Virtues that underline the importance of better preserving the cones present in Mayotte by limiting the destruction of their habitat and wild harvesting. Next step for flipper: explore the little-known depths of the world's second largest coral reef in New Caledonia during summer 2018.
The X-Life "Reef Explorer" project, funded by the CNRS, involves the UM and the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle. It benefited from the technical and scientific support of the Parc Naturel Marin de Mayotte for the entire campaign in Mayotte waters.
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