In what is pretty stunning news to me, iRobot has purchased Nekton Research for $10 million USD. The reason this is so stunning, is because Nekton is 30min down the road from me, and I’ve interviewed there! Nekton is a small business located in Durham North Carolina and specializes in underwater robots. You can see one of their robots, the Transphibian, operating after the jump. Up till this point Nekton has based it’s business on government research contracts and hasn’t done any large scale product sales – this looks to change. iRobot says they plan on moving their “Maritime Programs office” to the Raleigh-Durham area. Eventually iRobot plans to have all their underwater research and development happen at this location. This will be where the Seaglider program eventually moves to.

iRobot has updated their website to reflect the new acquisition and features the Seaglider, Ranger, Transphibian, and “High Speed UUV“. I’m looking forward to see what exciting things will pop out of the water, so to speak.

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A 5.5m long, 6,100 lb robotic submarine called the Autosub6000 (I wonder if there was a 5000) is getting ready to explore the depths of the Cayman Trough in the Caribbean. The Cayman Trough, which you may remember from the film, The Abyss, has never been explored do to its incredible depths of up to 25,000 ft (the Mariana Trench, by comparison, is 29,000 ft deep).  The AUV will be used by the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton (NOCS) on two, month-long, autonomous, exploration trips to plumb the depths of the trough. Autosub6000 will be used to autonomously identify volcanic acvitivty, and mark the location for a ROV, Isis, to take samples. The unique features of the vents are expexted to yield many new species of life.

“They could be hotter than 500C (930F), and if they are that hot, they will probably have quite different chemistry and life forms – we expect to find new species.”

Good luck Autosub6000, stear clear of the aliens.

[Via Slashdot]

Pictured above is a group photo of all the teams competing in the 11th annual International Autonomous Underwater Vehicle competition. University of Maryland won the competition, unseating University of Florida from their 3 year winning streak. Congratulations to all the teams. The final standings for the top 8 teams are below. Pictured below is Maryland’s vehicle and a team photo.

Final Standings:

1. University of Maryland
2. University of Texas at Dallas
3. École de technologie supérieure
4. University of Florida
5. United States Naval Academy
6. University of Victoria
7. Cornell
8. Florida Atlantic University

Don’t forget that the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International’s 11th Annual International Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition is taking place this weekend in San Diego, CA.

This year’s theme is “Underseas 11″ and will feature gambling themed tasks, such as grabbing a sack of cash from a “bank vault”, traversing an “air duct” (a floating PCV structure), and the like.

The competition is open to the public this Saturday and Sunday and is held at the U.S. Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare (SPAWAR) Systems Center’s Transducer Evaluation Center (TRANSDEC) pool located on Point Loma, San Diego. You can read the spectator FAQ (PDF) for more details.

25 teams from around the glob are registered for the competition, including my alma mater, NC State University. The teams have to construct a fully autonomous underwater vehicle that is capable of navigating, using machine vision, and acoustic navigation. It should be interesting (the competition is rather boring, since it’s underwater, but talking to the teams is fun). So, if you’re in the area, please go out and cheer them on. Send me some pictures if you do.

Update: The team from Cornell appears to be live-blogging the event.

Update 2: You can watch a live webcast of the finals here. It looks like the underwater video is being shot with an LBV from Seabotix.

Update 3: Here’s a list of the teams going into the finals.

Update 4: You can see the final standings here. Surprise ending!

The US Department of Defense (DoD) has released a report detailing the future of robotic military equipment and how the US military should proceed. The 188 page report (pdf) covers the next 25 years of unmanned military systems in the air, and sea, and on land.



This report is unique in that it address both ground and sea vehicles in addition to the much more "popular" and oft-used arial systems. This reinforces the Department’s position that integration of air, land, and sea systems is a vital part of the future of US military systems.

The report details recomendations made by field commanders and how further AI developments can lead to "thinking" systems.


Another fascinating aspect of the report is a huge appendix listing all the unmanned systems currently in use by the military. The image to the left is a shot of the Lockheed Martin Protector Unmanned Surface Vehicle.

If you have a hard time downloading the document, Roland Piquepaille provides a good outline.


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