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Long-Running Underwater Robot Lost At Sea
this_boat_is_real writes "Somewhere off the coast of Chile a pioneering underwater robot named Abe lies in a watery grave today. The Autonomous Benthic Explorer was one of the first truly independent research submersibles, being both unmanned and un-tethered to its launching ship. While on its 222nd research dive on Friday all contact with the craft was lost, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has announced."
Great, battle of the Titans in real life? Something tells me this is too much of a coincidence!
You think there is a mechanism of recovery more robust than the device itself? The pressure that sub handled was ungodly.
Well, may it's not lost.
Maybe the sub truly is autonomous, as in "having autonomy; not subject to control from outside; independent"?
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
From the WHOI press release: "ABE was equipped with several independent systems to bring it back to the surface at the end of a dive or should a fault occur. The Melville remained in the vicinity to see if ABE had resurfaced, at first searching for ABE’s strobe lights in the darkness. Researchers tried to establish radio contact with ABE in the event it had surfaced, but attempts turned up nothing."
Protip: the people that design these things can, and likely do, fit square pegs in round holes.
Suggesting "durrr, attach a balloon" is, in my not very humble opinion, insulting to the engineers behind these things.
And maybe, just maybe, one of the glass flotation spheres had a flaw in it and it imploded, like they said.