Underwater drones use sound to send snaps of the ocean floor

DRONES are sending back snaps from the deep. Uncrewed vehicles that scour the ocean floor for submerged mines can now beam back images to human operators in close to real time. The technology, developed by Canada's Department of National Defence, could also be used to autonomously map the locations of starfish colonies, for example, or study deep-sea hydrothermal vents. The torpedo-shaped drones constantly scan the ocean floor using sonar, reaching speeds of around 2 metres per second. They use image recognition to search for shapes that look like a submerged mine.