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DARPA Wants To Seed the Ocean With Delayed-Action Robot Pods

Posted by timothy on from the mostly-for-spying dept.

coondoggie writes "This plan sounds a bit like a science fiction scenario where alien devices were planted in the ground thousands of years ago only to be awoken at some predetermined date to destroy the world. Only in this case it's the scientists at Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency who want to develop a system of submersible pods that could reside in the world's oceans (presumably not in anyone's territorial waters) and be activated for any number of applications days, months or even years later."

6 of 67 comments (clear)

  1. WTF DARPA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    I don't get it.

    http://www.benthos.com/undersea-acoustic-release-modem-SMART-SM75.asp

    The article must be glossing over what makes this unique. Do they want a factor of 10 reduction in price? I've been working on the problem of cheap deep water electronics for nearly a decade so this is relevant to my interests(honestly who in the field of oceanography hasn't? Nobody wants to pay a ship to go un-fuck a $100 science project and mass production of gizmos is not the core competency of scientists in most cases).

    DARPA is essentially throwing up their hands at the problem of locomotion and saying it's cheaper from an energy standpoint to just pepper the ocean with lots of sensors than to transport a single sensor over lots of territory pushing water out of the way of its course. "Sensors" is a pretty broad catch-all for payload and can vary in price significantly, impacting the truth of that assertion.

    Changing batteries isn't cheap so disposable is desirable. Why not just embed a cell phone in a block of epoxy or polyurethane? It is cheaper to drop ballast than it is to displace 100ATM of water, so they might as well settle on a solenoid fired shear pin or electric door strike type mechanism. Syntactic foam and you can do the whole thing with a cheap prepaid, a pic processor, and a solar cell. Battery life scales with price so that is a matter of mission endurance priorities.

  2. Re:I make these by ColdWetDog · · Score: 3, Funny

    Mr. Lovecraft? Haven't you got the dates confused? I guess I'm not too surprised, you being dead for quite some time.

    --
    Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  3. Security by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    These things will need some kind of command and control interface. It will have to be deployed for years, decades perhaps. If anyone finds a security vulnerability they get to own a global botnet of actual robots. Considering drones have already proven prone to hacking I'd be a little bit concerned about this.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    1. Re:Security by Intrepid+imaginaut · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Maybe a list of one-time pads kept securely in the DoD? I could definetely see value in being able to secure a coastline by sailing around dumping a load of smart mines armed with supercavitating torpedos and advanced sensors with the ability to tell friend from foe. Or even better, send a sub around an enemy's coastline and drop them invisibly, break in case of war. Instant blockade! Given how important control of the ocean is, this could well be an overwhelming advantage.

  4. They've done this already by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They're called mines

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  5. Please don't do it by dave69 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Dear America, please don't mine the entire ocean with giant robotic sea mines, just because you can. signed, the rest of the world