Why Did Ulysses Build Underwater Robots?

Will O'Brien says Ulysses builds robots to solve some of the most critical tasks in the oceans. He calls the line the simple one-liner for a company that started three years ago.

Three years ago it was already clear that autonomous systems and robotics were going to do an increasing share of the world's GDP and an increasing share of critical work. He and his co-founders looked for domains where robotic systems could be deployed. A cursory look at air, land, and sea made the sea very interesting. A further look at the surface versus the undersea made the undersea very interesting. They could quickly identify jobs that were not being done underwater, were not being done on a scale, or were not affordable enough to do. The idea for building underwater robots came from that search.