Joe Wolfel is the CEO and founder of Terradepth. He is passionate about helping people make better and faster decisions regarding what we do (and don't do) in the ocean. Terradepth designs and builds ocean-going robots at scale, deploys them, and delivers data through an ocean data platform tailored for the maritime community. Prior to Terradepth, Joe has helped start a couple other companies, worked as a management consultant, and served as a US Navy SEAL officer with deployments throughout the Middle East and Africa. Joe was educated at the US Naval Academy.

TechRepublic's Karen Roby spoke with Joe Wolfel, co-CEO of Terradepth, about the company's ocean data-collection robot. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation. Karen Roby: I think this is a good way to summarize that what you guys are doing and are working toward is a fleet of fully autonomous deep ocean data collection submarines. Tell us a little bit about how this came about? I mean, you don't just wake up one day and say, yeah this is what I think I'm going to do.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), more than 80% of the ocean "remains unmapped, unobserved, and unexplored" – despite constituting more than 70% of the planet's surface. Now, a pair of Navy veterans are looking to change that with a line of autonomous robot vehicles that will plunge the ocean's depths in search of big data for the company's clients. "The company really started when Joe [Wolfel] and I first got together, which was back in 2004," said Judson Kauffman, who shares the CEO role with Wolfel, in an interview with Datanami. "We met in [Navy] SEAL training together, and ended up being assigned the same unit, and then went into combat together and became very close friends. There, they developed the idea for Terradepth, which "stemmed from some knowledge that we gained in the Navy" – really, Kauffman said, "just of how ignorant humanity is of what's underwater, what's in the sea." "It was shocking to learn how little we know, how little the U.S. Navy knew," he continued – and the more they dug into the issue after their time in the Navy, the more surprised they were.

Social distancing is a new fact of life for most, but not long-ago technical conferences brought experts together. In early February, Underwater Intervention provided a series of presentations on developments in untethered vehicles. A powerful trend was the increasing level of "autonomy" found in the sector. While not all the presentations addressed this theme, several helped clarify the many ways this "buzzword" is advancing the capabilities of untethered marine vehicles. Kongsberg Maritime offered two presentations: "How Autonomous is Your AUV" presented by Richard Mills and "Autonomous Technology for Ocean Exploration," by Arnt Olsen.