When the Titan submersible, carrying five sightseers to the wreck of the Titanic, blew up thousands of metres under the ocean surface in June, it underscored why humanity knows more about the surface of some other planets than about the depths of the Earth's oceans. Oceans cover more than 70 percent of the earth's surface. Yet, this underwater world is a challenging place to explore, as the Titan disaster showed. The deepest point under water, the Challenger Deep in the Pacific Ocean, is 11,000 metres deep, more than the height of Mount Everest. The light doesn't penetrate to such depths.

The promise of oceanic discovery has intrigued scientists and explorers, whether to study underwater ecology and climate change, or to uncover natural resources and historic secrets buried deep at archaeological sites. To meet the challenge of accessing oceanic depths, Stanford University, working with KAUST's Red Sea Research Center and MEKA Robotics, developed Ocean One, a bimanual force-controlled humanoid robot that affords immediate and intuitive haptic interaction in oceanic environments.

The discussion focuses on the development of Ocean One, a bimanual humanoid robotic diver that brings intuitive haptic physical interaction to oceanic environments. The robot was deployed during an expedition in the Mediterranean to Louis XIV's flagship Lune, lying off the coast of Toulon at 91 meters. Ocean One's demonstrated ability to distance humans physically from dangerous and unreachable spaces, while connecting their skills, intuition, and experience to the task, promises to fundamentally alter remote work. Robotic avatars will search for and acquire materials, build infrastructure, and perform disaster-prevention and recovery operations - be it deep in oceans and mines, on mountain tops, or in space.