Robot Reviews

No, they haven't found an ocean on the red planet, nor are they sending a deep sea robot to reinforce Spirit and Opportunity.

MARS is actually the acronym for Monterey Accelerated Research System, a deep sea facility that allows researchers access to a seafloor power supply with real time, high-bandwidth data transfer capabilities. On the other hand, the rover being referred to is the Benthic Rover, a deep-sea robot specially designed to collect information regarding food supply on the ocean floor.

Both MARS and the Benthic Rover belong to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI). By hooking up to MARS, the Benthic Rover can be controlled and monitored remotely by land-based researchers. 

According to project engineer Alana Sherman, who co-leads a team of researchers from MBARI,  “We could be sitting in our offices or at home on the weekend and use our laptops to command the rover to do something, and then watch live streaming video coming back from a depth of 900 meters out in the Monterey Bay.” Sherman's team developed the robot over a span of 4 years.

The robot creeps on the ocean floor at a rate of 1 m/min using commercial conveyor belts for treads. The snail-pace motion is necessary so as not to stir up a cloud of sediments which might affect the robot's measurements. 

By probing into the sediment layer of the ocean floor using what they call 'benthic respirometers', the Benthic Rover can gather information regarding food consumption of organisms thriving there. Then by comparing this with climate variables obtained from satellite data, scientists hope to learn more about the relationship between climate change and processes within the sediment community.

Right now, the team wants to focus on the California coast. However, there are plans to deploy the robot in Antarctica to find out how the receding ice is affecting the community of organisms deep down below it. By that time, it is anticipated that the rover would be able to navigate autonomously and be powered by a battery.