The Terranaut is a new mine-hunting bot designed for beaches
The autonomous robot is intended for the dangerous work of dealing with explosives in areas where Marines would typically tread.
BY KELSEY D. ATHERTON | PUBLISHED APR 21, 2023 10:25 AM EDT
On April 19, Nauticus Robotics announced that its work on the Terranaut, an amphibious machine designed to defeat explosive mines for the Defense Innovation Unit, had cleared its initial phase and was progressing to further development. The machine builds on Nauticus’ previous work with aquatic uncrewed vehicles. It fits into a holistic picture of untethered, autonomous underwater operations, where tools developed for commercial underwater work inform machines specifically built to tackle the special military needs below the ocean’s surface.
Nauticus teased this announcement of Terranaut on social media with a picture of tread lines on a beach leading into the ocean surface.
DIU, or the Defense Innovation Unit, is an organization within the larger Department of Defense designed to pull innovations from the commercial tech world into military use. Rather than reinventing the wheel, it is built to look at wagon wheels it could simply buy for its chariots.
“DIU gets intrigued when you have some commercial-facing technologies that they think they could orient towards a defense mission,” Nauticus CEO Nicolaus Radford tells Popular Science. “A lot of people focus on our big orange robots. But what’s between our robots’ ears is more important.”
https://www.popsci.com/technology/terranaut-robot-mine-clearing/
