A funny head that rotates 180 degrees, sturdy arms and delicate hands. This sums up Ocean One, a unique humanoid robot developed for the needs of underwater archeology. Five years after his first pool tests, he has just broken a world record by diving 852 meters deep, at the end of a test campaign which ended on February 16 off Cannes.
“After the pandemic period, we were eager to get back to sea, first in September 2021, then last February, explains Michel L’Hour, former director of the Department of Underwater and Underwater Archaeological Research (DRASSM) and member of the Marine Academy. In total, we made about twenty dives between Corsica and the continent on six different sites.”
The Ocean One robot provides access to thousands of shipwrecks with unparalleled dexterity.
Frédéric OSADA / Images Explorations
The objective was to test a series of technologies for a machine that could well revolutionize archaeological research at sea: the record set by Ocean One proves that, as in the space field, the robot is better able to be used in a environment inaccessible, even hostile to man.
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Indeed, the latter can physiologically go down to 200 or even 300 meters, but for the beyond, where tens of thousands of wrecks – especially the best preserved – are located, the archaeologists of the DRASSM and the researchers of the Stanford Robotics Labs (Stanford University) directed by Oussama Khatib are therefore trying to develop, within the framework of a so-called abyssal archeology program, this type of remotely guided underwater vehicle (ROV, for remotely operated vehicle).
“With our new ship, theAlfred Merlin, we started by exploring the wreckage of a P38, an airplane dating from the Second World War, then we continued with those of a submarine, an ancient boat, the Aléria 1, located near 330 meters below the surface, of an Italian liner, the Francesco Crispi, sunk in 1943, always deeper (500 meters), before reaching the famous 852 meters”, explains Michel L’Hour, who does not hide that each dive was epic. “The further down we go, the more Ocean One is subjected to strong pressures. We encountered small incidents on one of the propulsion motors, on certain electronic components or even some corrosion problems on an arm.”
From the surface, the humanoid robot is directed using a force feedback joystick to operate in the most delicate way.
Frédéric OSADA / Images Explorations
Still a few years of development
But most of the capabilities of the humanoid robot have been validated. Like his hands equipped with six motors giving him unprecedented gripping power: connected to a long umbilical cord, they are controlled from the support ship using a joystick, a haptic system similar to that of surgeons who perform remote operations.
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“We hope to achieve an accuracy of 1 centimeter and to be able to feel the texture of an object while raising it to the surface without damaging it”, explain its designers. Before warning that the robot avatar of the underwater archaeologist is still far from being operational. “We will need another five to ten years,” estimates L’Hour. Only then, in the Mediterranean or elsewhere, will archaeologists have access to an immeasurable underwater Pompeii.
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