More than half of the world's active volcanoes are not monitored instrumentally. Hence, even very serious eruptions occur with no warning for nearby populations of the upcoming disaster. As a first and early step toward a volcano early warning system, a research project headed by Sébastien Valade from the Technical University of Berlin (TU Berlin) and the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam led to a new volcano monitoring platform that analyses satellite images using artificial intelligence (AI). Through tests with data from recent events, Valade and his colleagues demonstrated that their platform, Monitoring Unrest from Space (MOUNTS) can integrate multiple sets of diverse types of data for a comprehensive monitoring of volcanoes. The team's results were published in the journal Remote Sensing.

As long as the volcano isn't about to erupt, each device remains dormant, consuming very little power – in fact, they're claimed to feature "the lowest stand-by power consumption in the world." Upon detecting even slight volcanic tremors, however, they wake up and begin sensing/recording temperature, humidity, vibrations, and the presence of various toxic gases. They can operate individually, or in a linked multi-egg network.