A few years ago I attended a technology forum at Shell’s then-new research facility on the west side of Houston, and Peter Diamandis gave a presentation about Xprize, a competition that puts out a significant technological challenge and asks teams to help solve the problem for a monetary prize. I honestly don’t know what the challenge was that year, but one of the winners figured out a solution on a cocktail napkin at a bar in Las Vegas. Never underestimate the ingenuity of the human brain.

Now Shell has formed its own Xprize challenge, embarking on a three-year study to explore the deep sea. The challenge consists of 21 teams that comprise almost 350 people from 25 countries, according to the Xprize website.

The competition was launched in 2015 to explore the depths of the Earth’s oceans. In an invitation to join the competition, Dr. Jyotika Virmani, Xprize’s senior director for energy and environment and prize lead for the Shell Ocean Discovery Xprize, explained the lack of knowledge around our oceans. “We have better maps of Mars, hundreds of millions of miles away, than we do of our own seafloor,” she explained. “We don’t know how many volcanoes or mountains are hidden in the ocean, let alone what strange life forms exist down there. Less than 5% of the ocean has been explored because it is opaque and a physically challenging environment.” It can cost $40,000 a day to run a vessel and up to $1 million to run an underwater vehicle, she added.

“We need new breakthrough technologies that can help us overcome the costs and can operate quickly and easily under great pressure in these cold and corrosive watery environments,” she said.

The competition will award $7 million to the team that can build underwater robots that will provide safe access to enable high-resolution ocean exploration to map the ocean floor. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is adding a $1 million bonus prize to incentivize the teams to develop smart technologies to detect underwater chemical or biological signals and trace them to their source.

Already a company called Eelume has developed underwater “sea snakes” that can live permanently under water. Used for subsea inspection, maintenance and repair (IMR), they act like self-propelled robotic arms that can travel long distances and carry out IMR activities in spaces that are too tight for ROVs or AUVs. According to the company’s website, they are modular combinations of joints, thrusters and payload modules that can hover and maneuver even in strong currents.

Eelume was formed in 2015 as a spin-off from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology after spending 10 years perfecting the snake robots in conjunction with SINTEF. It formed a strategic partnership with Statoil and Kongsberg in 2016 to explore the utility of the robots.

Sounds like a slither in the right direction.

Contact the author, Rhonda Duey, at rduey@hartenergy.com.

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