With oceans growing warmer and more acidic as a result of climate change, the world’s coral reefs are under siege. Recent research shows that the number of coral bleaching events has risen drastically in recent years, and in 2016 and 2017 about half of the coral making up Australia’s Great Barrier Reef died off.

But researchers at two Australian universities have developed an underwater robot that could help turn the tide in the ongoing struggle to save at-risk reefs. The briefcase-size submersible, dubbed LarvalBot, is designed to move autonomously along damaged sections of reef, seeding them with hundreds of thousands of microscopic baby corals.