DepthX: Mission 1 Accomplished

[Cheryl Jones]

DepthX: Mission 1 Accomplished
By Megan Miller | March 200

Bill Stone’s revolutionary autonomous robot completes its first field test in a Mexican cave system

Ace spelunker/space-hopeful Bill Stone, profiled in PopSci’s February issue, completed the initial field test of DepthX, his autonomous underwater robot, this week in the state of Tamaulipas, Mexico. If you’ve read the article, you’ll know that the idea is to work the kinks out of this ’bot so that it might later become a model for systems that could be used to explore one of Jupiter’s moons, Europa, which is covered in ice but believed to be home to a subterranean sea......

The ’bot plunged to a depth of about 300 feet, captured images [here] and video [see below], and built a 3-D map of the cenote while the team tracked its functions remotely, from an above-ground computer screen. They collected data and some samples from the floor of the cave and confirmed that everything was in working order—overall, a grand success.
Read on and see cool photos and video
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/aviationsp ... drcrd.html

[Nico]

Even more details about the same here

[driggs]

Not a very detailed article, but the DepthX project made Wired:

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,72907-0.html?tw=rss.index

[Realms]

Its on Space.com as well