Robotic turtle will inspect shipwrecks

If you haven’t noticed, I have a tendency to want to talk a lot about robots, whether in these blogs or in our actual news stories. The reasoning here is two-fold: One, the ways in which people out there are developing and deploying robots continues to expand, seemingly by the day. I think this is both important and interesting. Two, well, robots are fun.

In the latest story about robots, a European Union-funded research project called ARROWS (ARchaeological RObot systems for the World’s Seas) has developed an underwater robotic turtle called the U-CAT, which is designed to explore shipwrecks and capture footage which will be used to reconstruct a site.

The U-CAT robot features four independently-driven flippers for movement and propellers for locomotion.

"Fin propulsors of U-CAT can drive the robot in all directions without disturbing water and beating up silt from the bottom, which would decrease visibility inside the shipwreck," saidTaavi Salumäe, the designer of the U-CAT concept and researcher in Centre for Biorobotics, Tallinn University of Technology, in a press release.

For the vision portion of the robot, the U-CAT is equipped with an unnamed onboard camera which is used to capture video footage, which is later used to reconstruct an underwater wreckage site. The press release mentions the fact that divers currently explore shipwrecks, but this can be expensive, time consuming, and dangerous. I’d like to focus on the last part, which is the danger factor.

Personally, the idea of scuba diving into an old, rusted out shipwreck well below the water’s surface is a terrifying one. Think in your head of all of the things that could go wrong. With a highly-maneuverable autonomous robot like the U-CAT, the potential for peril is eradicated, while a search of the shipwreck is still possible. To me, a win-win situation.