  Due to their small radii, M-dwarfs are very promising targets to search for
transiting super-Earths, with a planet of 2 Earth radii orbiting an M5 dwarf in
the habitable zone giving rise to a 0.5% photometric signal, with a period of
two weeks. This can be detected from the ground using modest-aperture
telescopes by targeting samples of nearby M-dwarfs. Such planets would be very
amenable to follow-up studies due to the brightness of the parent stars, and
the favourable planet-star flux ratio. MEarth is such a transit survey of ~2000
nearby M-dwarfs. Since the targets are distributed over the entire (Northern)
sky, it is necessary to observe them individually, which will be done by using
8 independent 0.4m robotic telescopes, two of which have been in operation
since December 2007 at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory (FLWO) located on
Mount Hopkins, Arizona. We discuss the survey design and hardware, and report
on the current status of the survey, and preliminary results obtained from the
commissioning data.
