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4 days ago
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'Robo-mermaid' finds treasure in ship that wrecked 350 years ago
5 photos:
It's
a breakthrough, its creator says, and marks the beginning of an age
where the robot can undertake tasks that test the limits of a human
diver's endurance.
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5 photos:
OceanOne's movements were controlled on the surface, dozens of meters above the wreck.
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5 photos:
The first object recovered from La Lune was a vase that hadn't been seen by a human for three and a half centuries.
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5 photos:
OceanOne
successfully completed its maiden voyage, navigating a 350-year-old
wreck that lay out of reach of conventional divers since sinking in
waters 32 km (20 miles) off France.
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5 photos:
The robot features twin cameras and delicate haptic-feedback hands mounted on fully articulated arms and wrists.
Hide Caption
2 of 5
5 photos:
It's
a breakthrough, its creator says, and marks the beginning of an age
where the robot can undertake tasks that test the limits of a human
diver's endurance.
Hide Caption
3 of 5
5 photos:
OceanOne's movements were controlled on the surface, dozens of meters above the wreck.
Hide Caption
4 of 5
5 photos:
The first object recovered from La Lune was a vase that hadn't been seen by a human for three and a half centuries.
Hide Caption
5 of 5
5 photos:
OceanOne
successfully completed its maiden voyage, navigating a 350-year-old
wreck that lay out of reach of conventional divers since sinking in
waters 32 km (20 miles) off France.
Hide Caption
1 of 5
5 photos:
The robot features twin cameras and delicate haptic-feedback hands mounted on fully articulated arms and wrists.
Hide Caption
2 of 5
5 photos:
It's
a breakthrough, its creator says, and marks the beginning of an age
where the robot can undertake tasks that test the limits of a human
diver's endurance.
Hide Caption
3 of 5
Story highlights
- Humanoid dive-bot "OceanOne" successfully completes its maiden voyage
- The mermaid-like robot can go deeper and stay under longer than regular divers
(CNN)Drifting
down into the gloomy depths, the diver barely paused before entering a
wreck that lay undisturbed for three and a half centuries.
The
underwater traveler maneuvered slowly but determinedly, honed in on an
ancient artifact, gently picked it up and deposited it in a sample bag.
The
recovery of a small vase from the wreck of La Lune, once Louis XIV's
flagship, marked a significant step in man's discovery of the oceans.
The
diver in question, a plucky orange-and-white humanoid robot called
OceanOne, had successfully completed its maiden voyage. It navigated
the wreck that lay out of reach of conventional divers since sinking in
waters 32 km (20 miles) off the French city of Toulon in November 1664,
taking with it a thousand souls.
Aboard
a surface support vessel, Oussama Khatib, a Stanford computer science
professor, exchanged gleeful high-fives with his students, the Stanford
News reports.
Mermaid-like divebot
He'd
been controlling OceanOne from the safety of the boat, allowing it to
feel its way through the hazards inherent in any shipwreck, using its
twin cameras -- mounted in its head, just like a pair of human eyes --
and its delicate haptic-feedback hands mounted on fully articulated arms
and wrists.
At the other end of
the five-meter-long robot, a complex array of thrusters, and its
computer brain, are housed. Sensors enable it to maintain a steady
position, no matter the current.
It
got briefly stuck in the wreck, but its pilot 90 meters above it used
its arms to heave it forward, freeing it to carry on with its mission.
It's
a breakthrough, Khatib says, and marks the beginning of an age where
this underwater proxy can undertake the gritty, dangerous, tiring or
just plain repetitive tasks that can test the limits of a human diver's
endurance.
It will mean that
searches at depth, or underwater work on, say, oil rigs, is not limited
by the time divers can stay down or how deep humans can go -- around 40
meters (130 m) for recreational divers.
Out of depth
"OceanOne
will be your avatar," Khatib tells the paper. "The intent here is to
have a human diving virtually, to put the human out of harm's way.
Having a machine that has human characteristics that can project the
human diver's embodiment at depth is going to be amazing."
It's
a remarkable piece of gear. Its hands are covered with sensors that
relay the sensation of touch to the remote pilot, and its brain is able
to figure out how sturdy or fragile anything it encounters is. It was
developed originally to study coral reefs in the Red Sea, meaning a
light touch was essential.
"You
can feel exactly what the robot is doing," Khatib says. "It's almost
like you are there; with the sense of touch you create a new dimension
of perception."
After a successful
trip below the waves of France's southeast coast, the diver will return
to California where Khatib and his team will continue to develop it --
with the aim of developing a whole team of oceangoing bots that can work
silently in concert, going where no human could swim.
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