The Underwater Robot That Can Transform Into An Autonomous Submarine

Aquanaut, the new autonomous robot, might possibly be the closest thing to a real-life Transformer that we have.

IEEE Spectrum reported a robot that can change its shape from a mermaid-like humanoid form to a submarine form and vice versa. This means it can do deep-sea repairs as well as other tasks which are too complicated for other robots to handle and are too risky for human divers.

Evan Ackerman from IEEE Spectrum got the chance to observe how Aquanaut performed during a test. The test was carried out underneath a gigantic swimming pool’s surface. This is also the location where NASA did a microgravity simulation for training astronauts. Ackerman watched how Aquanaut opened its outer chassis and revealed its two claw-like arms.

At the moment, the robot is still being tested in the swimming pool condition. But after will be expeditions into the sea and active deployment. The robot is expected to work for oil and gas-mining rigs. It takes the companies which own and run this infrastructure a large sum of money for its inspection and maintenance. They use robotic technologies that have remained the same for decades, mostly because of such an extreme working environment.

HMI (Houston Mechatronics Inc.), the company behind Aquanaut, got access to the NASA’s swimming pool because two dozen of its 75 employees used to work for the space agency.

In an interview with IEEE Spectrum, Nic Radford, HMI co-founder said: