Developing imaging technologies to search for, discover, and understand life in the deep sea
The ocean is a vast three-dimensional space that is poorly explored and understood, and harbors unobserved life and processes that are vital to ecosystem function. Ocean-going platforms are integrating high-resolution, multi-camera feeds for observation and navigation, producing a deluge of visual data. The volume and rate of this data collection can rapidly outpace researchers’ abilities to process and analyze them. Additionally, to fully interrogate the space, novel algorithms and innovative robotic platforms are required to scale up our observational capacity. Two applications, locating animals of interest and conducting extended visual observations of animals in the water column, are particularly challenging objectives that require advances in imaging, robotic vehicles, and navigational algorithms. Here I will share collaborative advances that our group, the Bioinspiration Lab at MBARI, have been involved in to address imaging (DeepPIV, EyeRIS), vehicle (MiniROV, Mesobot, LRAUV), and algorithmic needs (FathomNet, ML-Tracking) to enable and sustain observations of life in the deep sea. Together, these efforts clearly demonstrate the potential that robotic platforms can have on exploration in unexplored environments and discovery of undiscovered life in our ocean.