Known as OceanOneK, the robot allows its operators to feel like they're underwater explorers, too. OceanOneK resembles a human diver from the front, with arms and hands and eyes that have 3D vision, capturing the underwater world in full color. The back of the robot has computers and eight multidirectional thrusters that help it carefully maneuver the sites of fragile sunken ships. OceanOneK, here doing an experiment in a swimming pool at Stanford University, resembles a human diver. When an operator at the ocean's surface uses controls to direct OceanOneK, the robot's haptic (touch-based) feedback system causes the person to feel the water's resistance as well as the contours of artifacts.

A diver examines one of the coral nurseries on the coral reefs of the Society Islands in French ... [ ] Polynesia. While scientists have succeeded at restoring some coral reefs, humans alone can't save all the reefs that are dying across the globe, a NOAA reef restoration manager said this month. Even in the best of conditions, human divers can spend only three or four hours per day working under water, said Tom Moore, coral reef restoration program manager for the National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration. And those best conditions are rare. That's not enough to halt the collapse of one of the planet's most crucial ecosystems, Moore said at the EarthxOcean conference: half the world's coral reefs have died and the rest are expected to perish in this century.

Researchers in Norway are testing how salmon in a commercial fish farm might react to being regularly monitored by an underwater robots. While fish farms are typically uneventful environments, they still require oversight to ensure the captive fish are safe and healthy, a task most commercial fish farms assign to a human diver. Maarja Kruusmaa and a team of researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology wanted to test how fish would respond to being watched over by robots instead of people. 'The happier the fish are, the healthier the fish are, the better they eat, the better they grow, the less parasites they have and the less they get sick,' Kruusmaa told New Scientist. The team used two different underwater robots to test whether the fish would react differently based on the size and propulsion method.

Oussama Khatib held his breath as he swam through the wreck of La Lune, 100 meters below the Mediterranean. The flagship of King Louis XIV sank here in 1664, 20 miles off the southern coast of France, and no human had touched the ruins – or the countless treasures and artifacts the ship once carried – in the centuries since. OceanOne, a humanoid robotic diver from Stanford, allows new underwater exploration capabilities. With guidance from a team of skilled deep-sea archaeologists who had studied the site, Khatib, a professor of computer science at Stanford, spotted a grapefruit-size vase. He hovered precisely over the vase, reached out, felt its contours and weight, and stuck a finger inside to get a good grip.

Researchers from Stanford University have created a humanoid robot or robot mermaid to explore sunken treasures and relics. Tagged as OceanOne, the robo-mermaid uses artificial intelligence and virtual reality technology to allow human beings to operate it remotely, as per Stanford News. The robot mermaid looks like a human with hands that are installed with sensors to enable OceanOne to discern if an item is fragile or not. It also has two cameras as its eyes and an artificial human brain for navigating the deep sea and analyzing data. According to CNN, OceanOne's first journey to the deep water was to retrieve a vase from the ruins of Louis XIV's ship La Lune.

In Mediterranean waters, off the coast of France, a diver recently visited the shipwreck La Lune -- a vesssel in King Louis XIV's fleet -- which lay untouched and unexplored on the ocean bottom since it sank in 1664. But the wreck's first nonaquatic visitor in centuries wasn't human -- it was a robot. Dubbed "OceanOne," the bright orange diving robot resembles a mecha-mermaid. It measures about 5 feet (1.5 meters) in length and has a partly human form: a torso, a head -- with stereoscopic vision -- and articulated arms. Its lower section holds its computer "brain," a power supply, and an array of eight multidirectional thrusters.

Even with bottled oxygen and elite training, there are underwater locations that lie well beyond our physical capabilities. But via haptic feedback technology and artificial intelligence, Stanford University's humanoid diving robot is now putting the ocean's depths within human reach. In its maiden expedition, the OceanOne droid has just scoured an untouched shipwreck off the coast of France and returned with a delicate, 17th century vase in its grip. Researchers are now eyeing future voyages to coral reefs, oil rigs and underwater disaster zones. With our deep sea diving capabilities only taking us so far, we have long sought to send robots down below to do the investigating for us.

Robots and artificial intelligence have opened doors in the fields of manufacturing and machine learning, but now they have gone where few expected them to go: deep sea diving. Stanford University professor of computer science Oussama Khatib developed his new deep ocean avatar in response to a need to dive deeper than humans can comfortably go. The robot he created, named OceanOne, is so revolutionary that it could change the field of deep sea diving, forever. "OceanOne will be your avatar," Dr. Khatib said in a Stanford press release. "The intent here is to have a human diving virtually, to put the human out of harm's way. Having a machine that has human characteristics that can project the human diver's embodiment at depth is going to be amazing."

A humanoid robotic diver has been developed that scientists and archeologists hope will open up a new realm of deep sea exploration. OceanOne, created by researchers at Stanford University, combines artificial intelligence with human-controlled haptic feedback systems to carry out underwater tasks too dangerous for human divers. Guided by a team of deep-sea archeologists, OceanOne has already been used to investigate the shipwreck of La Lune, the flagship vessel of King Louis XIV that sank in 1664 off the southern coast of France. "OceanOne will be your avatar," said Oussama Khatib, a professor of computer science at Stanford. "The intent here is to have a human diving virtually, to put the human out of harm's way.

French officials have unveiled a humanoid diving robot that they hope will give a big artificial hand to the practice of underwater archaeology. It is intended to help researchers explore underwater archaeological sites that are too deep to be explored by human divers. According to Stanford, the concept for Ocean One was born from the need to study coral reefs deep in the Red Sea, far below the comfortable range of human divers. No existing robotic submarine can dive with the skill and care of a human diver, so OceanOne was conceived and built from the ground up as "a successful marriage of robotics, artificial intelligence and haptic feedback systems."