Why Is Communication the Biggest Problem for Ocean Robots?

Will O'Brien says communication is the biggest problem for a robot that lives in the ocean. Corrosion and pressure are huge external forces, but a coating and anodizing the metal give some resistance to corrosion, and pressure can be limited by staying far above full ocean depth.

Full ocean depth is 6,000 meters. The ocean goes to about 10,000 meters in its deepest parts. The vehicles currently operate up to 1,500 meters and have been crush tested to 2,200 meters. Most important economic activity today happens in the 1,500 meter range. He thinks much more will happen later, particularly in critical minerals. Acoustic links manage about 10 kilobytes per second over about five kilometers, a ping like a dial-up modem, so much of the sensing has to run on the vehicle. Distance from anyone who can repair or recharge it makes operations harder.

Leviathan, the surface vehicle, picks an underwater vehicle up, puts it on deck, charges it wirelessly, and connects it to the internet through Starlink for a live diagnostic of what is working and what is not. The surface vehicle is autonomous. In the future the surface craft will carry replacement modules and repair the underwater vehicle in a vending-machine style. The underwater vehicles have around 100 times more onboard compute than any other autonomous underwater vehicle, running NVIDIA hardware onboard with an Intel CPU, because intelligent robotic work underwater needs that compute on the vehicle.