Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute recently developed software to be used in a deep-sea exploration project called DepthX.
Deep Phreatic Thermal Explorer (DepthX) is a mission to deploy an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) to the bottom of Zacaton Cenote, a sinkhole in central Mexico over 1000 feet deep. Dr. David Wettergreen of Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute developed the robot’s navigational software. Wettergreen’s past research has focused on robotics exloration, but this is his first underwater mission with Carnegie Mellon.
Wettergreen said that the project’s ultimate goal is to study the sinkhole’s underwater environment by collecting water samples while also creating a three-dimensional map of the sinkhole. “We need a vehicle...that can move through complex cave systems without getting lost or trapped,” said Wettergreen.
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