Deep Sea Robots Monitoring Oil Spill

The video feeds that comes from the bottom of Gulf of Mexico from the oil disaster are filmed by cameras managed by robots as large as a minibus. These robots operate at 5000 feet below sea levels at extremely high pressures. These are all submarine robots. They can do what no person ever could, and they’re serving an important role in the fight to stop the oil gushing from the blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico.

The most popular remotely operated vehicle being used in the project is the Millennium, an 11.5-foot-long, 8,000-pound, rectangular, foam-topped device with human-like arms that has the added benefit of wrists that can rotate continuously like a drill.

Operators of the robots are called “Pilots“. The operator room connects to the robots by fiber optics and allows operators to work far from the leak itself. They use gaming like devices such as joystick that moves the robot’s mechanical arm and maneuvers the machine through the water. Operator room has over 10 monitors, DVD video recorders and a sonar screen.

CNN has an interesting video titled Deep-sea mysteries: Why drilling in ‘inner space’ tests human limits.

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