A group of underwater archaeologists exploring the sunken remains of King Louis XIV’s flagship La Lune added a Virtual Diver named “OceanOne” to their dive team recently.
OceanOne is a Stanford-developed humanoid diving robot with “human vision, haptic force feedback and an artificial brain,” OceanOne made its maiden voyage alongside human divers to recover 17th-century treasures from bottom of the Mediterranean.
The concept for OceanOne was born from the need to study coral reefs deep in the Red Sea, far below the comfortable range of human divers. No existing robotic submarine can dive with the skill and care of a human diver, so OceanOne was conceived and built from the ground up, a successful marriage of robotics, artificial intelligence and haptic feedback systems.
OceanOne looks something like a robo-mermaid. Roughly five feet long from end to end, its torso features a head with stereoscopic vision that shows the pilot exactly what the robot sees, and two fully articulated arms. The “tail” section houses batteries, computers and eight multi-directional thrusters.
The humanoid form also means that when OceanOne dives alongside actual humans, its pilot can communicate through hand gestures during complex tasks or scientific experiments.
