More than 350 years ago, the flagship of the French Navy, La Lune, sank, dragging treasure and hundreds of men down with it. Since then, no human hands have touched any of the ruins or material remains—well, until now that is, thanks to the invention of what is being called a “robo-mermaid.”
The robot, which is called OceanOne, fills in a great need in underwater archaeology. Some sites exist at depths too dangerous to permit extended excavations by human hands. Submersibles or an atmospheric diving suit could be used instead, but are often quite expensive to buy or rent—and are relatively clumsy when it comes to handling delicate objects.
Which is exactly where the robot comes in.
“OceanOne will be your avatar,” said Oussama Khatib, a professor of computer science at Stanford, in a university statement. “The intent here is to have a human diving virtually, to put the human out of harm’s way. Having a machine that has human characteristics that can project the human diver’s embodiment at depth is going to be amazing.”
OceanOne is humanoid in form, with roughly five feet of head, torso, and “tail”—a section that houses its batteries, computers, and thrusters. It’s outfitted with an artificial brain, which makes sure the robot has a firm grip on objects while also ensuring it doesn’t grip them too hard. The brain is also paired with stereoscopic vision, which permits the pilot to see what the robot is seeing.
Further, OceanOne has two arms, each complete with a fully articulated wrists and hands fitted with sensors that provide haptic feedback to the pilot’s controls—meaning the pilot can actually feel whether the robot is grasping something heavy, light, firm, or delicate.
“You can feel exactly what the robot is doing,” Khatib said. “It’s almost like you are there; with the sense of touch you create a new dimension of perception.”
Of course, the robot can function pretty well without a pilot even laying a finger on a joystick. Its sensors are able to monitor current and turbulence, activating its thrusters as needed to keep it steady. And as the body of the robot moves, motors in the arms react immediately, adjusting them so that the hands stay in place.
Moreover, it can navigate thanks to its ability to “see” (through cameras and others sensors) the environment around it, and can even sense when it’s about to collide with an object and brace for impact with its arms.
In short, OceanOne is intended to fill in for a human in places where humans can’t go.
“We connect the human to the robot in very intuitive and meaningful way. The human can provide intuition and expertise and cognitive abilities to the robot,” Khatib said. “The two bring together an amazing synergy. The human and robot can do things in areas too dangerous for a human, while the human is still there.”
La Lune sees daylight
La Lune, meanwhile, was the flagship (vessel which was used by the commanding officer of a groups of ships) of French king Louis XIV’s navy. Louis XIV, also known as the Sun King, is famous for turning Versailles from a hunting lodge into the palace we see today, and La Lune was perhaps equally grandiose in scale: Approximately 140 feet (43 m) long and 30 feet (10 m) wide, it was an 800-ton ship that was carrying 1,000 men when it sank in 1664.
It was rediscovered in 1993 by Nautilus, the submarine which explored the Titanic, in about 300 feet (100 m) of water off the coast of Toulon, France.
But in the intervening two decades, La Lune was never excavated or looted, thanks to its depth. Then, OceanOne stepped in. Carefully manipulating its controls, Khatib was able to successfully guide OceanOne through the wreck, freeing it using its arms when it got stuck between two cannons.
Then, he used it to gently grasp and remove a grapefruit-sized vase, which was brought up to the surface for the first time in some 350 years—a proof-of-concept that means OceanOne is probably only just getting started.
—–
Image credit: Frederic Osada and Teddy Seguin/DRASSM
Comments