We’re already used to seeing them flying through the sky, whether it’s filming, watching traffic, or even speeding competitions. But what was so unusual was seeing. drones can work below the sea surfacea much more hostile environment where pressure complicates the performance of any task and even finding yourself is difficult.
Belgian tech entrepreneur and diving enthusiast was in 2018. Christophe Chatillon she decided to do something about it and sent a text message to a phone via her niece. robotics student facebook group in your hometown. they answered Sayri Arteaga and Meidi Garciawhere one meeting is sufficient to register and jointly create the project unannouncedventure where they developed the underwater equivalent of a drone: a autonomous robotable to finding yourself and map the seafloor to check their status or to monitor the development of Posidonia meadows or underwater fauna.
daily links El Altet airport with community capital -Belgians are the second foreign buyers of tourist homes on the Costa Blanca-, Robotics Degree from the University of Alicante or the existence of an increasingly important technological hub around the Digital Zone supported by the Generalitat Valenciana convinced the firm’s founders. Entrepreneurs are confident in the business potential of their technology.
«Working underwater is too complicated and until now almost all tasks such as taking pictures or mapping the seabed are done by divers who, in addition to needing special certifications and equipment, can spend very little time underwater. They usually don’t stay for more than 45 minutes or an hour,” explains Arteaga. Some time constraints that robots don’t have.
However, underwater vehicles developed for such missions had other disadvantages as well. In some cases because they need to be connected by a cable to be managed, in other cases because they need to install additional infrastructure – antennas and relays – to be routed. acoustic signals for your location.
One of the innovations they brought from uWare is that their tools locating yourself in real time, to make a map of the area where they will work using their cameras and to be able to guide them. A technology already quite common in land-based devices – based on the same principle as that used by the most advanced robot vacuums, for example – but not yet used underwater.
Also, the uOne does not even need a pilot as it is fully autonomous and performs its task. without the need for human intervention. Of course, it currently cannot stream the footage and data it captures, and is limited to saving it for later download.
Track reservations
The first commercial applications the company is currently preparing are the surveillance of protected marine reserves, whose control is now very complex. “Usually divers check it once a year and that’s it. with uOne these areas can be monitored every week and determine if there are any issues that might affect them,” explains the firm’s co-founder. The company has already conducted its first pilot test in Tenerife, where they mapped existing sebadales—large underwater meadows—to locate or determine their extents.
The company is also working on establishing a company. sensors In addition to the image, it allows other types of parameters to be captured. water quality or pH, to extend its usefulness. And in the future, they want to incorporate new developments that will aid physical tasks on the surface as well as underwater.
beyond monitoring protected areasIn the medium term, the firm sees another important business niche under the scrutiny and control of everyone. renewable energy facilities offshore wind farms, mostly offshore. Facilities that are becoming more and more important given the need to decarbonize the economy.
In any case, they work with an open mind to all possibilities and are convinced that just as aerial drones are performing more and more tasks, their underwater “brothers” will have an increasingly important range of motion in the future. .