ROV: The Diver’s Little Robo-Helper
He’s not afraid of sharks and depths. What should we call him?
The World Ocean is much like outer space. Distances are huge underwater, the water column is dark. It’s tough to even imagine bioluminescent planktonic stars which shine like distant galaxies, or whole ecosystems, inhabited by strange creatures. We’re dumbfounded every time we encounter something new beneath the waves!
Our main research methodology for underwater exploration is blue water diving. This is a system of diving in any part of the open ocean using an intricate system of ropes and pulleys. Sometimes, there will be hundreds or even thousands of meters of water beneath a diver. They hang among the endless darkness, observing and filming translucent plankton that float by. Blue water diving is the best and, perhaps, only way to observe gelatinous planktonic life-forms. It allows scientists to capture not only the creatures’ appearance, but also their behavioural characteristics, their feeding patterns as well as various aspects of how they breed, interact and develop. All this can be done without interfering with their lives or damaging their gentle bodies with harvesting equipment.
A human being can only spend a limited amount of time underwater. Depending on the conditions, this time ranges between 30 minutes to several hours. Humans also have depth limitations: we can only go down a few dozens of meters. Contemporary diving equipment allows people to dive to about 40 meters and discover life at subsurface depths with little hassle. To dive deeper, you have to use special gaseous mixtures, then you can go as far down as 150 meters. But if you want to discover what lies at depths of, say, one kilometre, you have to climb into a bulky submersible or ask an underwater robot for help. Unlike human divers who are made of flesh and bone, robots cannot be eaten by sharks. They can also handle conditions which far surpass human capabilities, diving to depths of several kilometres and completing various tasks there.
Just a little camera and a few simple LED lights
Underwater robots have been used in a multitude of projects in the past: laying pipes, disabling mines, searching for treasures and sunken ships, underwater welding and drilling, collecting living samples, examining the water’s chemical composition and filming underwater. All these tasks could be conducted at depths inaccessible to human beings only thanks to the help of machines. Most of them are operated by pilots located on vessels above them. The robots’ cameras transfer images to their monitors on the surface, together with information collected from a multitude of sensors. In its mechanics, the process is very similar to a computer game, except that an actual robot located three kilometres beneath you responds to your commands!
http://www.smd.co.uk/
Many types of underwater robots exist: huge pipe-laying robots the size of a cottage that stroll along the sea bed on chain tracks, or tiny drones with only a camera and a couple of propellers. Aquatilis Expedition will have a robot of its own. We are repurposing a basic “Seamor” underwater robot model in partnership with the company that built it. We are fitting our robot with a high-resolution video camera. It will have a thrilling 4K at its disposal! This camera will allow us to observe deep-sea monsters in unprecedented detail: we will see every tiny tentacle! No research institute has ever used 4K cameras for underwater exploration, we doubt that even James Cameron has done so.
In order to successfully fit a robot with this type of technology, we need to resolve a whole host of issues: design a deep-sea sealed container and carve it out of a single metal piece; test it in a hyperbaric chamber at pressure levels surpassing working conditions by one and a half times; develop a system for streaming video to the surface using a fibre optic cable; consider the configuration of our data centre which will need the capacity to record streamed 4K video. Most importantly, we will need to update the basic model’s structure in such a way that a camera snugly fits to the robot’s frame and can be remotely operated from the surface. The robot will also need a pair of mechanic arms which will hold underwater torches. These will allow us to light filmed subjects from various angles. All these tasks are very intricate and time-consuming, completing them will take us about a year.
Our robot will dive alongside us in all the places where we work. It will film underwater life at unreachable depths, supplying us with unique video footage. It will become a fully-functioning member of the team. And so, our sci-fi underwater friend really needs a name. We’re still thinking hard about what to call it. Do you have any ideas maybe?
