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Maiden Voyage of Stanford's Humanoid Robotic Diver Recovers Treasures From King Louis Xiv's Wrecked Flagship
OceanOne, a new humanoid robotic diver from Stanford University, has explored a 17th century shipwreck.
Credit: Frederic Osada and Teddy Seguin/DRASSM
Stanford University researchers are calling the maiden voyage of the OceanOne humanoid diving robot a significant astonishing success.
The robot swam through the wreck of "La Lune," the flagship of King Louis XIV, which sank 100 meters below the Mediterranean in 1664, about 20 miles off the southern coast of France, and recovered its treasures and artifacts.
OceanOne looks something like a robot-mermaid. It measures about five feet long from end to end, with a torso featuring a head with stereoscopic vision that shows its pilot what it sees, two fully articulated arms, and a "tail" section that houses batteries, computers, and eight multi-directional thrusters. The robot is outfitted with human vision, haptic force feedback, and an artificial brain. It can dive alongside humans, but the intent is to have humans dive virtually to put them out of harm's way. The human pilot would feel exactly what the robot is doing.
"OceanOne will be your avatar," says Stanford professor Oussama Khatib. "Having a machine that has human characteristics that can project the human diver's embodiment at depth is going to be amazing."
From Stanford Report
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