By Max James
A robot diver, developed by Stanford University, is being used to explore one of Louis XIV’s ships sunk in 1664 off Toulon in France. This week OceanOne – as the 1.5m robot is called – successfully brought to the surface a vase from the wreck which sits at more than 110m.
The robot diver was created by a Stanford team led by Oussama Khatib, a professor of computer science, who was remotely controlling OceanOne from the surface during the dive.
OceanOne uses a built-in AI system to control its movements. It has two articulated arms and eight thrusters. The controller can view the underwater scene through two cameras positioned as eyes. The robot is capable of delicate movement and can relay vibrations and a sense of touch back to its controller.
‘You can feel exactly what the robot is doing,’ Khatib said after the dive. ‘It’s almost like you are there; with the sense of touch you create a new dimension of perception.’
