Around 80% of the global ocean floor is still completely unknown or has not been measured in a modern way. Now the international maritime and scientific communities are banding together to map the Earth's entire seafloor by 2030.
Ocean Infinity, one of the exploration companies belonging to this community, has unveiled its operational fleet of robot ships. No humans will be inside or outside this special fleet, which in a fit of belligerent optimism has been renamed the “Armada”.
How will the robot ship fleet work?
The GEBCO Seabed 2030 project was created to try to bridge the data gap on the Earth's seabed once and for all. He shared the different ways he plans to do it. One of these involves new technologies such as Ocean Infinity's fleet of ocean-going robot ships. The automatic boats have already been committed for commercial purposes e logistics.
The company plans to transform the ocean information industry by relying on the latest technologies and the most powerful computers available.
Ocean Infinity aims to use fully robotic systems for marine exploration. First of all to contain costs, with far fewer resources required and more capillarity. The environmental impact should also be reduced, providing a gigantic amount of information compared to that collected to date by normal control ships.
The company CEO, Oliver plunkett, told the BBC: “Ocean Infinity has ordered 11 robots of different sizes. The smallest are 21 meters long and the largest 37 meters, all capable of trans-oceanic voyages, guided by control centers on the ground.” The main control center will be based in the Southampton area on the south coast of England.
The robot ships are equipped with sensors capable of minutely exploring the ocean floor. They can descend up to 6000 meters below the surface. Not only that: according to Plunkett, Armada will not limit itself to exploring the bottom of the oceans. It will be able to inspect offshore wind farms, telecommunications cables and other human artifacts. The cruising speed will be approximately 12 knots (22 km per hour). They will have a range of 3.700 to 5.000 nautical miles (5000 to 9000 kilometers).
