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Robotic Trailblazer

December 30, 2018

Shortly after a WHOI-French-led expedition found the wreck of Titanic on the seafloor in 1985, the Navy commissioned a return mission to test a small remotely operated vehicle (ROV) with high-resolution camera systems that could operate in deep water in tight spaces and amid tangled wreckage too dangerous for humans to investigate in larger submersibles. The Deep Submergence Laboratory at WHOI had six months to design and build this prototype ROV. Dubbed Jason Jr., it was the first fiber-optically cabled deep-sea robot. It proved that deep-sea exploration could be achieved using unpeopled robotics and blazed the trail for ROVs like today’s Jason. (Photo courtesy of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Archives)