A sustainable blue economy thanks to underwater drones

Audio 02:11

Image taken from a video presentation of iBubble, by Notilo Plus.

© YouTube / Notilo Plus

By: Dominique Desaunay Follow

2 min

A young French company is developing underwater drones to collect and then analyze data collected at the bottom of the sea using artificial intelligence programs.

The mission of these autonomous aquatic robots is to enable maritime industries to commit to a sustainable blue economy that is more respectful of ocean environments.

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The ocean is the biggest carbon sink on the planet,

, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Global Warming

,

.

But our human activities and our CO2 emissions greatly degrade the natural maritime processes that regulate the global climate. 

An essential subject of the discussions of the COP26 which opens in Glasgow in Scotland according to the scientists and even the astronaut Thomas Pesquet, recommending to set up a sustainable ocean industry, in order to relieve the planet of our carbon emissions.

🔵🚨 An obvious fact which however only really struck me with the hindsight of the ISS: there is in fact only one immense interconnected ocean.

It is essential for the good health of 🌏 - and yet it is often forgotten when we talk about climate change!

#OneOceanScience pic.twitter.com/blZYI0FKpk

- Thomas Pesquet (@Thom_astro) October 25, 2021

Autonomous and multifunction underwater drones

To support the developments of this new, much more responsible blue economy, the young Marseille-based Notilo Plus, created in 2016, designs autonomous and intelligent mini underwater robots, explains Nicolas Gambini,

.

Our robots allow different types of missions to be carried out, the objective of which is to easily collect data in an underwater environment. For example, they make it possible to inspect the hulls of ships, to check dams, to go and check the state of the flora and fauna in a submerged place ... Our aquatic drones work in a very simple way to search a specific type of information like video images or collect more specialized data using different sensors. This digitized information is automatically fed back to our computer servers to be analyzed by powerful artificial intelligence programs. The maritime industries use our drones, but so do scientific research, for example, to check the state of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.The applications of these robots are multiple, but always with the objective of supporting the development of a blue economy respectful of the environment.

Notilo Plus underwater drones are autonomous, but above all multifunctional.

Small in size and manageable by a single person, these underwater robots are fitted with sensors installed according to the needs of the maritime industries.

They are aimed, for example, at aquaculture farms, maritime transport, but also civil security organizations or ocean research institutes.

These underwater drones also make it possible to optimize the installation and maintenance of

wind

which produce renewable and carbon-free electricity, without harming biodiversity and the tranquility of our friends the fish.

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