Many eras of human history can be divided based on when one group of explorers found another group of people. For example, famous trading routes like the Silk Road resulted in Chinese and European cultures interacting like never before and Europe’s discovery of the Americas spawned imperialist conflicts and spread awful diseases to the Native Americans. However, where have humans met a serious roadblock in our innate fascination with exploration? The ocean.
Earth’s oceans are big, dark, and highly pressurized. For those reasons, humans have yet to fully discover everything that lies on some of the deepest ocean floors, but that does not mean efforts are not being made to investigate oceans. Working with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, NASA engineers have developed an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) called Orpheus. NASA’s AUV builds upon the design of other exploratory robots like Mars rovers.
The robots use a system of small lights and cameras to identify landmarks on the ocean floor and develop maps based on those landmarks. By using landmarks like rocks or shells, the robots can identify places they have been before and limit redundancy. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration wants to use teams of these robots that share their databases to quickly develop ocean floor maps.
In their most basic sense, these robots help humans feed their desire to explore the unknown. For the scientific world, they have a few more benefits like exploring extreme environments which allows us to study organisms that can live in unlikely places. This could help us find life beyond Earth since NASA has stated that Europa, a moon of Jupiter, has oceans that are like our deepest oceans. Also, developing robots that can function in these conditions benefits humanity because we can use these robots to do dangerous jobs and protect human lives.
The idea of using our own oceans to model environments found on other galactic bodies is certainly interesting, but when I think about the history of exploration and discovery, people tend to overlook the long-term effects of our actions. Plastic bags have already been found in the Mariana Trench around 11,000 meters under the sea (well within the range of this robot). While that bag was not a result of these robots, we should not sacrifice our home planet to explore foreign planets that might not have any benefit to humanity. For the most part, NASA respects that principle, but it might not always be NASA who will be leading deep sea exploration.
Ultimately, most people imagine that kids usually need to be told where to go and where not to go so they stay safe. Ironically, these ocean robots suggest that any human (adult or child) will go to great lengths to explore places we are not supposed to be, and after considering the pros and cons of this robot, I have yet to reach a full conclusion about whether that is good or bad.
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