Create a robotic underwater suit to investigate sunken ships

Create a robotic underwater suit to investigate sunken ships

'Exosuit' allows divers to move safely up to 300 meters deep. Your next mission will be to Antikythera Island to explore one of the most prolific shipwrecks known

  A hybrid between submarine spacecraft and space suit will allow a team of researchers to explore, more accurately than ever, the wreck of the Island of Antikythera. Exosuit is a metal frame, with articulated arms and legs, capable of transporting a person up to 300 meters deep. And once submerged, move freely and recover all kinds of objects.

Exosuit is an experimental vehicle-suit built by the Canadian company Nuytco Research . Its first owner is JF White, one of the companies responsible for wastewater treatment in New York City. Now they have lent it to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), the largest independent research center of the seas, to explore the remains of Anticitera again. Near this Greek island was found, at the beginning of the last century, a sunken Roman ship with some of the most interesting archaeological pieces that are known. Among them stands out the mechanism of Antikythera, a device full of gears that allowed to predict astronomical events that is considered the oldest known computer.

50 hours of immersion

The sunken ship is about 120 meters deep. To get there, Exosuit has a system of four propellers that allow you to navigate in all three dimensions at will. It also has prehensile forceps as a replacement for the hands, which allow objects to be grasped with precision and, above all, softness. "They are like toothpicks," said Phil Short, who will be in charge of the immersion, to New Scientist magazine. "The first time you use them you fill up on food, and little by little you become more skilled."

The system, which costs approximately 1.5 million dollars, has a feeding system using an umbilical cord that connects it with a surface ship that is responsible for both communications and life support. Exosuit, its creators say, is capable of keeping a person underwater, at great depth, for 50 hours in a row.

The characteristics of Exosuit allow facing submarine archeology in a different way. On the one hand it provides the ability to work at great depths and for long periods of time of the submarines, and on the other the flexibility and versatility of the divers. From the WHOI they hope that, thanks to him, they can find a second mechanism in Anticitera. The dive is expected for September.