Mesobot
Gallery
Overview
Hybrid ROV/AUV that quietly follows jellies and other drifting animals through the ocean's twilight zone.
Mesobot is a research robot built by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution with MBARI and university partners to study animals in the ocean's twilight zone, between about 200 and 1,000 m deep. Pilots can fly it like an ROV over a hair-thin fibre-optic tether, then cut it loose to follow a target on its own using its cameras. Large, slow-turning propellers and red lights keep it from disturbing or scaring the jellies, siphonophores and larvaceans it tracks, and it can stay with an animal for a day or more. In 2021 the team reported Mesobot autonomously following gelatinous animals for hours in Monterey Bay.
Primary Roles
Notes
1.5 m long, 1.5 m high and 1 m wide, about 250 kg, rated to 1,000 m and running more than 24 h on lithium-ion batteries. Designed by Dana Yoerger at WHOI with MBARI, Stanford University and the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. First open-water trials took place in Monterey Bay in June 2019; autonomous tracking results were published in Science Robotics in June 2021.
