War Robots Put to Peaceful Uses at AUVfest 2008

Posted 22 May 2008 at 20:28 UTC by steve

Every year, the US Navy's Office of Naval Research (ONR) sponsors an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) festival. The theme of this year's festival, which ran from May 12-23, was "Partnership Runs Deep: ONR Unmanned Mine Hunting Technologies help NOAA Explore Sunken History." Not surprisingly, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) co-sponsored this year's festival. Together, the groups provided archaeologists with autonomous underwater robots originally developed for warfare but adapted to scientific research. The modified AUVs were used "to explore historic shipwrecks in Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay including two British warships lost during the American Revolution." A day by day log of events can be found on NOAA's Ocean Explorer website.