Orpheus Autonomous Drone Underwater will explore the ocean base

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has announced that on May 14, one of the exploration vessels called Okeanos Explorer departed from Port Canaveral in Florida for a two-week expedition. This ship has an autonomous underwater vehicle called Orpheus which is a technology demonstration.

Autonomous Underwater Exploration Ships are a new class of submersible robots designed to show off systems to help identify and explore scientific features on the seabed. Orpheus was developed by engineers at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and is an evolution of a vision-based navigation system that was previously used on Mars. This mission is conducting exploration off the east coast of the US in the Atlantic Ocean.

NASA said usually the search equipment is great location, and consuming power like sonar will be asked to be navigated in dark and gloomy waters near the seabed. However, Orpheus uses low-power camera and lights along with sophisticated software that makes it a greater sequence than the most sinking in the sea.

Orpheus is smaller than ATV and weighs around 550 pounds. The design is intended to be agile and easy to operate when rough with the ability to explore at the depths that most of the vehicles cannot survive. Orpheus can work on almost anywhere in the ocean, including the most extreme depth.

The project team hopes that in the end, a bunch of underwater robots that work as a team will build 3D maps in the extensive area on the sea floor which has not been explored in the Hadal zone which covers the area of ​​more than 20,000 feet. Before the robot can be removed to be explored at such depths, it must be tested thoroughly in shallow waters. The team believes that in the future, Orpheus will place some of the most extreme marine environments within explorer ranging from deep sea trenches to hydrothermal ventilation.