Remote Underwater Exploration
Chevron has been testing the use of custom-ROVs instead of divers to clean marine growth from offshore assets, saving time and dramatically reducing risk to the divers.
Full article at: Chevron.com Newsroom
Previously described only from specimens found in whale and seabird stomachs, Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, the highly elusive colossal squid, has been positively identified from footage captured by international team of researchers using the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s ROV SuBastian. . At a depth of 1,968 feet in the South Atlantic Ocean near the South Sandwich Islands, SuBastian spotted this baby squid swimming gracefully through the cold, dark water:
Full article at: ExtremeTech 17apr25
Researchers from the University of Miami and OceanX uncovered the mysterious “brine pools” at the bottom of the Red Sea in 2000. The team used an ROV to guide a separate collection device to retrieve water samples from the dense brine pools..
Findings available at: Nature.com 27jun2022
Dubbed ZodiAq, this twelve-sided robot has a soft, flexible, angled appendage of each of its sides, each connected to its own motor, allowing it to both swim and crawl without disturbing marine life on the ocean bed. This locomotion method was inspired by flagella found on bacteria.
Full article at: Hackaday.com 09apr25
Research paper at: ARVIX.org 25mar25
We aren’t sure how this concept works but researchers at Beihang University claim to have developed a small, battery-operated, underwater drone that can not only withstand the pressures of the Mariana Trench but uses the pressure to propel itself.
The drone can also change its shape for various tasks, like using its fins to swim and glide through the water and then switching to legs for crawling along the ocean bed, like a crab.
Full article at: TheSunUK 25mar25