I think a whole lot of people who are worried about environmental damage from this robot are not realising that even though it&#x27;s advertised as autonomous it only operates for a few hours before needing a recharge and as such it can be turned off very easily if things aren&#x27;t going right.<p>The ocean is massive.  Even coral reefs are massive.  A fleet of these robots (which they don&#x27;t have yet) would take years to affect significant areas.<p>This is a totally different ballgame to humans previous experiments involving introducing an organism to do pest control in a new environment.