Russian gas company Gazprom wants to build an oil pipeline from Vyborg, Russia to Greifswald, Germany. The pipeline will supply 26 million homes with natural gas for heating. There’s one big problem though – the pipeline runs over the Baltic Sea-floor which is still covered by up to 150,000 unexploded mines placed there during World War II. In order to allow the $10 billion USD project to continue, Bactec International has been hired to build an underwater robot to find and detonate the unexploded ordinances that lie in the path of the pipeline.

The robot, which will help perform the biggest commercial mine-clearance project ever, will locate approximately 70 mines, each filled with over 600 lbs of explosives. Once the exact location of each mine is determined, a support ship will warn any others ships in the area to leave, monitor for marine animals in the area, and the robot will maneuver a smaller (10 lbs) detonation charge near the unexploded ordinance. Once all ships, the robot, and any marine animals are clear of the area, the mine is destroyed and the robot will return to recover the remains of the bomb.

[Via Slashdot]

The famous underwater ROV (remotely operated vehicle), Jason, which was integral in discovering the wreck of the Titanic and other famous ships, recently captured a spectacular underwater volcano eruption in high definition. This extremely rare event is even more impressive considering it’s 4000 feet (1200 meters) below the ocean’s surface, in an area of the Pacific ocean near Fiji. This is the deepest erupting underwater volcano ever discovered and the extreme water pressure allowed Jason to record video mere feet from the eruption. The lava spewing from the West Mata volcano is also thought to be an extremely rare, and very hot, form of lava previously only found on extinct volcanoes.

You can see videos of the eruption after the jump.

Jason is operated by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and the work was funded by NOAA and NSF.

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A couple of weeks ago we reported on Jon Hyland’s NanoSeeker Micro AUV project. Today Jon posted some more details on his project and he seems to be making rapid progress. With the help of a rapid prototype machine there are now working prototypes of the vehicles in the water. The NanoSeeker has a “3-axis, solid state compass, with an integrated 3-axis accelerometer”, a bluetooth debugging interface, and runs on a ATmega328 microcontroller. The vehicle is steered via two control surfaces controlled by a Solarbotics GM15 pager gearmotor. Oh, and don’t forget that the vehicle is 6 inches long and 1.25 inches in diameter!

Video of the prototype after the jump.

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Cornell University has won the 12th annual AUVSI Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition. And, according to Cornell’s tweet, second place goes to University of Victoria and 3rd to University of Rhode Island. Interestingly, these three teams weren’t even in the top 5 of last year’s compeitors (pdf), so they seem to have put in a lot of work. You can read all of the team’s technical papers here. Cornell’s, U.Vic. and URI’s papers will make interesting reading for all the 2010 competitors with an ax to grind.

Congratulations to Nova, Aerius, and Ram-Boat ’09 and all the engineers behind them on a job well done.

After the jump are two recap videos from the 1st and 2nd days competition.

If you like this story, will you please Digg it? Thanks!

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AUVSI and ONR’s 12th Annual International Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition starts up tomorrow (July 30th), with two days of prelimiary runs and testing, followed by 2 days of competition this weekend. Last year’s winner, University of Maryland, along with 29 other teams are signed up to compete. Several of the teams have blogs where you can follow the competition as it unfolds. Cornell (update: along with ETS) will also be tweeting the events. You can read the full rules for this year’s competition, entitled “Divin’ Dozen”, here.

Personally, I’m rooting for the NCSU Underwater Robotics Club – a club I helped found. Go wolfpack!

Update: Here’s a nice compilation shot of a bunch of different vehicles at the competition. The picture was taken by the Naval Academy Team.

Update: We have winners!