Work in deep waters is generally not only very complex and therefore expensive - it also harbors numerous dangers for humans. It doesn't matter whether the task is the maintenance of maritime infrastructures, the salvage of munitions or - probably the main task in the future - the removal of waste. Scientists and pragmatists see the solution to the associated problems in the use of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), which remain underwater for long periods of time and can handle complex tasks there thanks to artificial intelligence (AI).

At HANNOVER MESSE 2022, the Robotics Innovation Center of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), based in Bremen, will be demonstrating how such an AUV might look and operate. The DFKI research unit - in association with a global network of partners from industry and academia - scored its first successes with the "Cuttlefish" AUV developed within the Mare-IT project. This intervention robot, which can be freely positioned in the water column, has two deep-sea capable gripping systems attached to its ventral side, with which it has already been able to successfully demonstrate semi-autonomous underwater manipulation.

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