If it hadn't been for Hurricane Iniki in 1992, Kauai scientists might have never discovered the Wailua River yellow loosestrife. The critically endangered, endemic plant-meaning it's found nowhere else on Earth-clings to an inaccessible cliff face thousands of feet high. Iniki's winds dislodged a few fragments, and the scientists who found them determined that it was a new species, naming it for the storm (Lysimachia iniki).
Today, though, a robot can do what once took a hurricane. Nearly six feet long and weighing just 7.5 pounds, the Mamba is an aerial robotic arm developed by a team from Outreach Robotics and Canada's University of Sherbrooke. Working with the National Tropical Botanical Garden (NTBG) on Kauai, the Mamba's operators suspend it from a drone and fly it to spots humans can't reach easily-if they can reach them at all. Using GPS sensors, the Mamba can take cuttings to within centimeters, and eight propellers allow the arm to move independently from the drone. What used to take humans hours to achieve with helicopters, rappelling and climbing can now be done in minutes with no risk to human life.
Of course, drones have been used to observe plants in remote areas for years now, but the Mamba gives researchers an unprecedented opportunity to study them. "When you see these plants with only a drone," says Ben Nyberg, who works with NTBG, "you're kind of removed from them, since they're just images on a screen. So to have this robotic arm come down and hand you this plant that very few people have ever seen intact-it's a pretty surreal experience. And, you can't write a species description simply from looking at a photo."
The Garden Isle is home to some 250 endemic plant species, and the samples the Mamba collects will likely increase that figure. The team has already gathered more cuttings from Lysimachia iniki, which NTBG has propagated. Physical samples offer botanists the chance to collect seeds, grow roots and help the plants reproduce so those species with fewer than fifty individuals known in the wild might survive for generations to come.
There's more to be done. GPS sensors don't always function properly next to a cliff, and the robotics team is refining the sensor system to make the Mamba easier to operate. So, too, do Nyberg and NTBG have their work cut out for them. "There are a lot of challenges in growing these plants," he says. "There's really no playbook for this."
