Photo: X Prize
This may seem hard to believe, but humanity has actually gone further with space exploration than knowing what lies deep within our planet’s oceans. It would appear that the void poses a lesser challenge than the trillions of gallons of salty water the ocean explorer would have to deal with.
With drones taking over the skies, it would make perfect sense to entrust deep-ocean exploration to similarly unmanned submersible vehicles for a number of reasons. First of all, the most difficult aspect of reaching extreme depths has to do with the water pressure. A vehicle designed to hold a human being needs to be partly hollow, which instantly renders it more susceptible to water pressure.
Second, a human being needs oxygen, which on the one hand means large, heavy pressurized tanks that add weight, and on the other a limited time spent underwater. Need more reasons? I’m afraid we’re fresh out of them, but they should be enough.
46 years after the first man stepped on the Moon, we still don’t know much about 95% percent of the sea floor on our own planet. And even the little that we do know has been mapped using sonars and other long-range methods, so it’s just the underwater relief we’ve mapped, but have no idea what’s living down there.
The X Prize sponsored by Shell and worth $7 million intends to fix that. The challenge is to map a four-kilometer-deep (2.5 miles) 500 square kilometer area (193 square miles) using autonomous underwater drones. If that doesn’t sound too difficult - and it doesn’t - it’s the special conditions that turn this into a challenge.
The drones have to be deployed from land or air, and they have to be completely autonomous since the operators are forbidden from the surveyed area. Speaking about the challenge, X Prize CEO Dr. Peter Diamandis said, "What we're going to see will be more autonomous; it's going to be smaller; it's going to be cheaper; it's probably going to be swarm in nature. This is what we're seeing because of the proliferation of cellphone technology. Robots are getting much more capable."
The Shell Ocean Discovery X Prize will take place in 2017 over two separate stages, with the winners to be announced in December 2018. Follow the events unfold on the contest’s official website.
Second, a human being needs oxygen, which on the one hand means large, heavy pressurized tanks that add weight, and on the other a limited time spent underwater. Need more reasons? I’m afraid we’re fresh out of them, but they should be enough.
46 years after the first man stepped on the Moon, we still don’t know much about 95% percent of the sea floor on our own planet. And even the little that we do know has been mapped using sonars and other long-range methods, so it’s just the underwater relief we’ve mapped, but have no idea what’s living down there.
The X Prize sponsored by Shell and worth $7 million intends to fix that. The challenge is to map a four-kilometer-deep (2.5 miles) 500 square kilometer area (193 square miles) using autonomous underwater drones. If that doesn’t sound too difficult - and it doesn’t - it’s the special conditions that turn this into a challenge.
The drones have to be deployed from land or air, and they have to be completely autonomous since the operators are forbidden from the surveyed area. Speaking about the challenge, X Prize CEO Dr. Peter Diamandis said, "What we're going to see will be more autonomous; it's going to be smaller; it's going to be cheaper; it's probably going to be swarm in nature. This is what we're seeing because of the proliferation of cellphone technology. Robots are getting much more capable."
The Shell Ocean Discovery X Prize will take place in 2017 over two separate stages, with the winners to be announced in December 2018. Follow the events unfold on the contest’s official website.
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