Readers like you keep news free for everyone.
More than 5,000 readers have already pitched in to keep free access to The Journal.
For the price of one cup of coffee each week you can help keep paywalls away.
# Take a Break
There's a killer robot patrolling the Great Barrier Reef
And starfish are quaking. The brilliantly-titled Crown of Thorns Starfish robot is systematically killing starfish that are upsetting the eco-system
SO IT TURNS out some killer robots aren’t out to destroy human life after all.
But some of them aren’t so nice to starfish.
There’s a killer robot currently patrolling the Great Barrier Reef systematically searching for a particular starfish that has been happily munching its way through the beleaguered coral reef.
And this bot is packing enough gadgets to make James Bond envious: cameras, thrusters, extendable robot arms, and a chilling mobile injection arm.
Yes, the superbly-monikered Crown Of Thorns Starfish bot (COTSbot) is a conservation tool that administers lethal injections to the starfish when it sees them.
Trained in a lab, the bot has a 99.4% accuracy rate when it comes to recognising the rogue starfish, and can roam the reef for eight hours at a time.
The bot was commissioned because the size of the famous reef precludes divers from performing the same function with any effectiveness.
