The first autonomous underwater drone

In search of the secrets of the sea.

Exploring the ocean floor always means facing one of the most hostile environments on the planet, absolute darkness, extreme pressure, limited communication and a constant problem, autonomy, because unlike aerial drones, underwater vehicles cannot simply land to recharge or receive GPS signal easily and that turns any long-duration mission into an enormous energy challenge.

But now a Canadian company called Cellula Robotics appears to have taken an important step to change this. The underwater drone in Envoy just traveled more than 2,000 km completely submerged, without surfacing even once. There were 385 continuous hours of operation underwater, powered not by conventional batteries, but by hydrogen fuel cells.

And perhaps that is the most important part of the story.

Many of today's underwater drones still rely on limited batteries, forcing frequent pauses, vessel recovery and constant recharging, reducing range, increasing costs and making long offshore operations difficult. The Envoy tries to solve exactly that bottleneck developed by Cédula Robotics in Canada, the vehicle measures about 8.5 in length and was designed to operate in real long-duration missions, such as mapping the Ocean Floor, inspection of underwater infrastructure and autonomous navigation in unpredictable environments.

Only the most impressive thing was not only the distance traveled.

During the mission, the drone performed more than 4,000 underwater turns and maneuvers, that is, it was not simply a straight and controlled movement of the laboratory. And perhaps the most impressive thing is to realize that none of these technologies belong to the future anymore, they have begun to silently enter our present.