9 Deep-Sea Drones That Will Soon Explore the Ocean Floor
Humanity has only seen 5 percent of the ocean. These XPRIZE challengers want to change that.
By David Grossman
Mar 7, 2018
Humanity has explored less than five percent of the ocean, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). That's a number XPRIZE hopes to change. The Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE is a three-year global competition challenging teams to advance and develop technologies for rapid, unmanned, and high-resolution ocean exploration. The goal? To build robots that can create a bathymetric map and then photograph various items underwater.
After a culling in Round 1, XPRIZE has announced the nine remaining competitors for Round 2, in which the undersea drones will have to capture an image of a "specifically named item at 4,000 meters," with a bonus for identifying 10 other archaeological/geological/biological features.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/robots/a19139755/ocean-xprize-round-2-finalists/
