WEBVTT

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Exploring the deep
ocean is not easy. It's dark,

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it's cold. You can't breathe.
The pressure is extremely high.

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It's a really hostile
environment for humans,

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kind of like outer space.

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So to learn more about what lives
in the ocean and how it affects us,

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scientists need special
tools like underwater robots.

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These tools are designed and built to
explore ecosystems and gather information

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about marine life and unusual features

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like seafloor, hot springs called
hydrothermal vents. The images,

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videos, and other data they
collect help scientists,

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understand ocean habitats and how
the marine environment changes.

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Don't you just love seeing these
images coming back from the deep ocean.

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These are things we've never seen before.

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I'm Debi Blaney,

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let's look at these tools and who builds
them and how they work and what the

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future of ocean exploration may look like.

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Today ocean explorers mostly
use two kinds of tools,

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autonomous underwater vehicles or
AUVs that run on battery power.

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And they look like torpedoes
or little submarines.

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They swim through the water for hours
and days along a programmed course.

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And some can hover like a blimp. Others
glide up and down on the ocean currents.

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And sometimes AUVs even allow
for very interesting encounters.

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Scientists use AUVs to map the
sea floor and sample the water.

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And because they can
last for hours or days,

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we're able to explore larger parts
of the ocean more efficiently.

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The second kind of underwater robots
it's called remotely operated vehicles

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or ROVs. ROVs

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Have lights and cameras to help scientists
see what's in the water and on the

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sea floor,

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they send data and video back to
the ship with a long flexible cable,

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kind of like a huge
underwater extension cord.

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Many ROVs have mechanical arms
to collect samples of plants,

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animals, and rocks, and
they may be new to science.

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Scientists can put different
kinds of sensors on ROVs,

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depending on they are exploring.

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In this Dee-Sea Dialogue series we want
to talk to the people who are out in the

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field doing this work. Let's talk
to Jessica Sandoval. She's an ROV

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pilot.

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As an ROV Pilot, I work to
one kind of mechanically,

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electrically maintain these
vehicles when they're on the deck.

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And when they're in the water to
really have a lot of fun flying them

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underwater or manipulating using these
large robotic arms that we have on board.

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Manipulators

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were developed for kind of an oil
and gas applications initially. Well,

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they're very, very strong. They have
500 lbs of grip for some of them.

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So some researchers have actually
been looking into how to provide maybe

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manipulators underwater with
delicate grip to make more of

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a gentle sample collection.

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So not only is an ROV good for getting
kind of beautiful shots of an underwater

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landscape or seascape,

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but it's also useful for taking
these really intricate samples.

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Jessica, the ROVs you operate are huge!

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How do you get them in the water
and then fly them underwater?

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So in order to launch and recover
these vehicles, it really takes a team.

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So we have folks on deck that
are using cranes or winches

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in order to pull these
really heavy vehicles and put
them in the water or to put

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them back on deck.

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So these ROVs are quite large
for reference think about

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a car. Putting a car under water.

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It's about the best analogy that you
have for, for one of the vehicles.

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And so there's really an orchestra
of people that it takes to

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put these vehicles in the water
and recover them safely. For us,

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how we fly these large vehicles underwater
is it's all kind of dependent on a

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buoyancy system. Buoyancy meaning

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that you want to make sure
the thing kind of floats.

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So interesting, Jessica.
You have an awesome job,

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but the ocean is so vast look tools.

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Do you have to find
what you're looking for?

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And not only do we use an ROV in
order to explore the sea floor,

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but we also do things such as multibeam,

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which is basically scanning
the sea floor, using sonar.

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Painting a picture of
this large landscape.

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So we can see features that we couldn't
resolve before or didn't know were there

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before. That's

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the really incredible thing about the
multibeam system that we use on ships.

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Kind of the future of ocean exploration
is having more of an autonomous

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setting or having an autonomous vehicle
perhaps that is able to maintain a

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station and maintain a survey
perhaps at one location for a

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long period of time.

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Now I'm curious, Jessica, do
ROVs ever have bad days? Like,

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do they break down underwater?

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ROVs do definitely experience
bad days underwater.

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They do break down in a way,

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but then that's why we have a
large team of ROV pilots and

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engineers that can that

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are very well trained in repairing them.

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Wow, all that sounds so
amazing. Thank you, Jessica,

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for spending time with us today and
good luck on your next expedition.

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The ocean is so vast.

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It really takes more than one type
of tool to explore it as well as many

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different backgrounds and skillsets.
What we just learned from Jessica,

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how she is building tools
to use on large ROVs,

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Dr. Phillips is focused on something
else. He's innovating smaller,

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cheaper,

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easier to operate tools that may lead to
a whole new field of ocean engineering.

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As an engineer, as ocean engineers.

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We're really starting to question
some of the fundamental ways that

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tools are made for exploring the deep
ocean. When you have a good idea,

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you should run with that and not
be slowed down as much as possible.

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You should be able to try that
out and maybe it doesn't work,

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throw it against the wall. If it doesn't
work, move on to the next, you know,

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that sort of iterative process is what
we're enabled to do here in my lab.

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So tell me, why are you developing these
smaller tools to explore the ocean?

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The state of the art of deep sea
exploration technology, right? Large,

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world-class ROVs and submersibles
and all that sort of thing.

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Those are really on the scale
of space programs. I mean,

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they're not funded as well, you
know, as sending rockets to the moon,

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to the international space station,

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but they are funded at a scale that
really only a handful of countries can

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afford. We're coming up with
ways to make them ourselves.

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Once we figure out these formulas, these
recipes for making things ourselves,

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it really opens the
doors. We can, you know,

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rapidly change and augment modify things.
And then when it does work, it's new,

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whatever we do is totally new to science.

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Well, Brennan, I'm really
fascinated by your work.

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So tell us more about some of the
innovative tools you've been working on,

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which one are you really proud of?

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Really, it's sort of just serendipitous
that we live in a time now where,

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the capabilities of 3D printing and
rapid prototyping are so good that you

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can make a lot of your
things yourself, you know,

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coming at things from a very creative
angle of bringing in people that maybe

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don't normally work in oceanography.

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Really by chance I happened to be a
postdoc at the same time, in a lab,

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up at Harvard, with an origami
roboticist. The idea is that,

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you can have a multi-faced geometry
that can open and close. Well,

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he had this really innovative idea that
you could have a folding dodecahedron.

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You're showing a prototype working.

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That can use one motor
that turns a little bit,

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and then can completely
encapsulate a deep-sea animal. That

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worked.

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And that was all enabled through somebody
who had never worked in oceanography,

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talking to somebody like me, who knew
how to make things work underwater. Okay.

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So we're a good team there.

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And then having a really good 3D printer
that could rapidly make this geometry,

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which is very complex and
had to fail a lot. You know,

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we went through many iterations before
actually coming up with something that

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could be at this size and
can actually go underwater.

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And it's all enabled by the formulas
we have in the lab to make this really

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unique,

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totally new sort of thing that probably
other folks thought we couldn't even

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make. And I can tell you, we have.

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What do you personally think the
future of underwater robots looks like?

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We're really establishing a new
discipline. To be honest, I feel like,

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I think we're really entering a
new phase, a new sort of approach.

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And that takes confidence. You
know, you got to learn how to,

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you got to learn how to
walk before you can run.

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And so we are learning how
to walk right now with a lot

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of these early successes
that we have here in the lab.

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Then now we can do something
like the RAD sampler here,

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which I kind of consider we're
running now with that, that, that,

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that's what it's all about. Um,

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who knows what will be five or 10 years
from now? Both myself and my peers.

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You know, there's, there's
the, sky's the limit.

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It sounds like you and Jessica are
really putting together the unexplored

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puzzle. That is our ocean and
creating a clearer picture of it. New

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technologies and the people who are
designing them are making robots more

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nimble, easier to build and
able to explore more remote
parts of our ocean. And

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someday, maybe oceans on other planets.

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What do you want to know about the ocean?

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Maybe a robot will bring
back the answer soon.