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Undersea robots find key clue to a mysterious shipwreck
Robots just helped shed light on a maritime tragedy. The US Coast Guard, National Transportation Safety Board and Woods Hole Oceanographic have used both an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) and a fiber-controlled craft to find the voyage data recorder of the El Faro, a cargo ship that sank near the Bahamas during Hurricane Joaquin last October. That's no mean feat when its remains are 15,000 feet deep, and the recorder is roughly the size of a coffee can. The recovery should not only help explain the exact circumstances of the El Faro's final moments, but provide some closure to the families of the 33 crew members that lost their lives.
Watch the Coast Guard train in this 360-degree video
Disney has just released a cool promo video for its upcoming film The Finest Hours, and you'll likely want to watch it using a VR headset if you have one. The House of Mouse captured the Coast Guard doing training drills in Los Angeles on a 360-degree camera provided by a company called 360Heros. It then posted the final product on the film's Facebook page to take advantage of the social network's 360 video feature. By the way, you can still enjoy the video even if you don't have a VR headset -- simply drag the picture with your mouse pointer to watch it from different perspectives.
SeaAway's offshore Sea Sentinels detect incoming contraband
A Florida-based startup dubbed SeaAway (no relation to Segway, truth be told) is looking to make our ports a good bit safer in the future by implementing an offshore screening process that could detect "chemical, biological, and nuclear traces as ships travel through." The aptly-dubbed Sea Sentinels would be anchored to the seafloor some 14-miles from a port, and will even house up to 15 humans and an array of unmanned aerial vehicles for extreme situations. The platforms would utilize RFID readers to detect what types of cargo passed through its screen, and if sensors flag a suspicious container, the Coast Guard is called into action. Unfortunately, the $100 million it costs to erect each system would have to be subsidized by a passage fee of $20 per container, but tax breaks for shippers are currently be pondered. Nevertheless, a prototype system will see construction later this summer, and if all goes well, finalized versions could be patrolling our seas in the not too distant future.
