Underwater Vehicles
Underwater robots swarm the ocean
Researchers test a new, acoustic-based navigation system to solve a problem that oceanographers have grappled with for years—getting multiple underwater robots to monitor the ocean cooperatively in swarm-like fashion.
Read MoreMesobot: Following life in the Twilight Zone
Mesobot is a brand new underwater vehicle designed to reveal what lives in the ocean’s twilight zone. Mesobot can follow animals as they move through the darkness and as they migrate from the depths to the surface and back. The twilight zone is vast and remote, but is threatened by unregulated fishing and climate change. We need Mesobot’s insights to understand and protect the twilight zone before humans change it forever.
Read MoreA new way of “seeing” offshore wind power cables
Eager to share best practices and technical know-how with the offshore wind sector, WHOI researchers test out an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUVs)—a staple of oceanographic research—to see if it can perform subsea cable surveys faster and more economically than using large and expensive ships.
Read MoreSharkCam
SharkCam, a customized REMUS robot, follows and films a great white shark by tracking acoustic signals sent from a tag…
Read MoreSitting atop a legend
HOV Alvin pilot Valentine Wilson sits atop the research submarine in 1966, shown here in its first incarnation. After Wilson…
Read MoreImagining new vehicles for exploration
Andy Bowen is the kind of guy who wakes up in the middle of the night unable to go back to sleep, because he’s just too excited about a solution he’s just imagined for a new robotic invention.
Read MoreNavigating the Changing Arctic
New, fully autonomous glider will collect critical-but-scarce ice thickness measurements from below the surface of the Arctic ocean.
Read MoreSplash in the Dark
The human-occupied submersible Alvin isn’t often recovered after dark—usually it’s on deck in time for dinner, even though the sub…
Read MorePorting AUV Sentry to the Robot Operating System
Ian Vaugh, WHOI Sponsored by: AOP&E Department
Read MoreColonization in slow motion
Quotes (Kirstin Meyer-Kaiser)
Featured image: Glider Pilot
After a journey of more than two months from Miami, a team recovers a Spray glider on the continental shelf…
Read MoreWHOI to be Featured in Upcoming BBC Program ‘Blue Planet Live’
Scientists, engineers, vehicle operators, and ship crew from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) will be a featured part of the upcoming BBC program, Blue Planet Live, which will air over four nights beginning March 24. The series will include two live broadcasts from the research vessel Atlantis showing launch and recovery of the human-occupied submersible Alvin.
Read MoreMesobot, Follow that Jellyfish!
WHO scientists and engineers are developing an innovative autonomous deep-sea vehicle with hovering and manuevering capabilities that will allow it to follow animals without disturbing their environment and behavior.
Read MoreAssembling of Mesobot Frame
The Deep-See Peers into the Depths
Decades of research from many WHOI scientists and engineers have culminated in a multifaceted vehicle to explore deep-sea marine life.
Read MoreUnderwater Vehicles
In order to understand the ocean, scientists often find they have to get themselves or their instruments into very specific…
Read MoreCoding Curiosity
The ocean is an extreme environment that is hard for humans to explore. One solution is building deep-sea robots that can autonomously make decisions on what to look for and where.
Read MoreAlvin Submersible Makes 5,000th Dive
Alvin, the country’s only deep-diving research submersible capable of carrying humans to the sea floor, reached another milestone in its long career on Nov. 26, 2018, when the sub made its 5,000th dive during an expedition to the Guaymas Basin in the Gulf of California.
Read MoreSentry Completes Its 500th Dive
WHOI’s free-swimming robot Sentry completed its 500th dive on October 16, 2018, off the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica. The autonomous underwater vehicle has used its sonar systems to help scientists map the seafloor, track the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, locate the voyage data recorder on the sunken El Faro cargo ship, and carry out advanced research on many other missions to help us better understand our ocean and our planet.
Read MorePodcast: Using Philanthropy to Explore the World’s Oceans
Quotes Mark Abbott
Journey to the Bottom of the Sea
My eyelids were tightly pressed down as I mustered all the tricks I could think of to get myself to…
Read MoreThe Discovery of Hydrothermal Vents
In 1977, WHOI scientists made a discovery that revolutionized our understanding of how and where life could exist on Earth and other planetary bodies.
Read MoreNew Details on Discovery of San Jose Shipwreck
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) recently obtained authorization by Maritime Archaeology Consultants, Switzerland AG (MAC), and the Colombian government to release new details from the successful search for the three-century old San José 62-gun, three-masted Spanish galleon ship that sank with a cargo believed to be worth billions of dollars. The ship, which is often called the ‘holy grail of shipwrecks,’ went down with a treasure of gold, silver, and emeralds in 1708 during a battle with British ships in the War of Spanish Succession.
Read MoreMission to the Ocean Twilight Zone
The twilight zone is a part of the ocean 660 to 3,300 feet below the surface, where little sunlight can reach. It is deep and dark and cold, and the pressures there are enormous. Despite these challenging conditions, the twilight zone teems with life that helps support the ocean’s food web and is intertwined with Earth’s climate. Some countries are gearing up to exploit twilight zone fisheries, with unknown impacts for marine ecosystems and global climate. Scientists and engineers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution are poised to explore and investigate this hidden frontier.
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