OceanOneK, a humanoid robot that searches for treasures at a depth of 1000 meters (video)

We want to go to the Moon and Mars, but there is a whole unexplored planet a few kilometers from us: depths of the sea.

There are many reasons why this is so unknown to us. The main thing is that The sea is a very hostile environment, as is space. When we descend into the depths of the ocean, the pressure is so great that the oxygen in our body becomes toxic, leading to death.

wetsuit world depth record It belongs to the Egyptian diver Ahmed Gamal Gabr, who in 2014 descended on 332.35 meters. He descended in just 12 minutes, but took 15 hours to get back up because he had to make numerous decompression stops at different depths so that his body could release the nitrogen produced by the extremely high pressure.

For descending to great underwater depths, we use manned submarines or remote controlled mini submarinesbut these vehicles are not as maneuverable, and they cannot do what a person with two hands would do.

The Stanford University solution is called OceanOneK, a humanoid diving robotslightly larger than a human.

OceanOneK this summer, the depth record for a humanoid robot was broken, Descending to a depth of 1000 meters, as you can see in the intro video of the news.

The big advantage of OceanOneK (O2K what is it called to enter the team), is that it has two grasping hands that the operator holds on the surface.

The two eyes of the robot with their respective cameras generate stereoscopic vision in 3D, identical to human. Equipped with 3D glasses, the operator sees distances and depths perfectly, as if he were down there.

The tenacious hands of OceanOneK are controlled in real time by the aforementioned operator with some exoskeleton that clones the movements of its own hands into a robot. In the video, we can see how O2K explores a sunken Roman ship at a depth of more than 500 meters, and capable of lifting a small object the size of a watchand place it in the box to bring it to the surface.

A diving robot with arms is not only great for exploring sunken ships or planes. He is also practicing repair of cables and installation of submarines.