Get to know a bit more about the science behind our mission, the research and our future plans. The article below, written by Hilary Brueck, gives an insight into why the XPRIZE competition is so important to future developments in scientific discoveries & technological and medical advances.

“The oceans are Earth’s least explored space.

Blanketing more than two-thirds of the planet, the seas hide clues about questions like “when is the next tsunami?,” “where did that plane crash?,” and even “how high will sea levels rise?”

Today, XPRIZE — the non-profit started by Peter Diamandis that awards multi-million dollar prizes to spur new inventions — awarded $4 million to a team that built a pair of robots to help solve some of those mysteries.

The autonomous vehicles are designed to explore the deepest corners of the sea floor, places fewer than a handful of humans have ever visited. The robots work together to map the bottom of the ocean: One vehicle, named “Hugin,” moves below the waves, while the other, “SeaKIT,” stays on the surface.

“Our vision for the ocean is a healthy, valued and understood ocean,” Jyotika Virmani, XPRIZE’s executive director of prize operations, told Business Insider. “A map is the most basic level of understanding that we can get to … and we just don’t have that map yet.”

The winning team wants to map the entire sea floor by 2030

The winning team behind the robots is called GEBCO-NF Alumni, and it is spearheaded by a duo of researchers based in New Hampshire and Russia.

“We were 78 people from 22 countries that worked on the project,” project director Rochelle Wigley said when the prize winners were announced in Monaco on Friday. “Our diversity wasn’t only in nationalities, it was in education, careers, backgrounds, gender, color, age. We were truly diverse.”

During the final phase of the XPRIZE competition in Greece, their pair of vehicles successfully mapped an area of the sea 250 square kilometers wide and 4,000 meters below the surface in 24 hours. That’s an area more than twice the size of Paris.

 XPRIZE

Creating a good map of the sea floor would help scientists better predict tsunamis, estimate sea-level rise, and assist rescue crews as they hunt for downed planes and ships.

The team’s winning device is relatively low-cost. The two vessels use satellites and broadband radio to communicate, and they employ sonar to map the sea floor. No humans are required to step foot in the water for the system to work. When the Hugin submarine is ready to return home, it simply parks itself inside the bigger SeaKIT ship.

GEBCO-NF Alumni wants to map the entire sea floor by 2030 using the pair of robotic ocean explorers. It’s an ambitious plan, considering that less than 10% of the world’s oceans have been mapped to date.

To work more quickly, the team uses cloud-based data processing that speeds up the mapping process. That way, instead of waiting two to three weeks for a map to render, the process can be done in days, at a detail level of 5-meter resolution.

“If you put a DNA sensor on the technology, you could actually even sniff out and figure out the distribution of invasive species,” Virmani said”

Image courtesy of: Kelly Duncan 

In 2016 Hush Craft Ltd were approached by GEBCO-Nippon Foundation Alumni Team to assist their team in the Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE competition. Hush Craft were responsible for designing, manufacturing and operating the unmanned surface vehicle ’SEA-KIT’. After two and a half years of planning and hard work the team have just completed our submission for the Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE competition finals, which are currently underway in Greece.

The Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE competition will accelerate innovation for rapid and unmanned exploration of the uncharted deep-sea; catalyze markets in deep ocean exploration and discovery; encourage sustainable resource development and protection; illuminate the most mysterious part of the planet and ignite the public imagination. Hush Craft Ltd’s ability to be a one stop shop for designing, developing and operating makes us perfectly suited for such a challenge.

SEA-KIT’s unmanned capabilities feature the ability to control the vessel from an operation centre, located anywhere in the world, no matter the distance from the vessel. This ability for remote operation has also been extended to surveying equipment on board, which includes state of the art MBES systems. SEA-KIT achieves this through its ability to stream live data to the operation centre via multiple satellite links.

Being a truly unmanned but fully compliant vessel provides SEA-KIT with a large variety of economic and environmental benefits compared to a typical research vessel. By eliminating the need for an on-board crew, the vessel size is reduced. The reduced vessel size combined with the hybrid diesel-electric propulsion system results in an approximated fuel reduction of 95%, which in turn significantly reduces the cost of data acquisition.

Image courtesy of: Tomer Ketter

SEA-KIT was fitted with a custom-built gondola that is capable of mounting various multibeam systems to be able to conduct surveys in both deep and shallow waters.

The images show the underside of SEA-KIT. Here you can see the gondola fitted to house the multibeam and HiPAP for communicating with the AUV from the control centre.

On Friday the 9th of November at 03.00AM, after two and a half years of continual research, designing, planning and testing, SEA-KIT embarked on her mission in the finals of the Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE competition. The aim of her mission was to map at least 250 km² to 500 km² at depths of 2,000 m to 4,000 m.

SEA-KIT arrived back to shore at 13.30PM on Saturday the 10th of November, 35 hours after her departure. She had completed her mission perfectly to plan, with no physical human interaction. After the data was processed, the team presented their data submission to the XPRIZE judges and are now patiently awaiting the results.

SEA-KIT would like to thank the GEBCO-Nippon Foundation Alumni for including us as part of the team and to the Nippon Foundation for their continued support over the past two years. It has been a privilege for SEA-KIT to be part of such a ground breaking and exciting project.

What’s next for SEA-KIT?

SEA-KIT International Ltd is building on the foundations laid down by the XPRIZE competition, developing and conducting safe offshore operations and successfully ensuring that the original objectives of SEA-KIT are realised whilst exploring both scientific and commercial opportunities. Working with the GEBCO-NF Alumni team, associates and future clients to benefit great projects such as Seabed 2030, SEA-KIT International Ltd has several exciting opportunities to come in the new year.

We are keen to push new boundaries in many more marine sectors, please contact info@sea-kit.com for more information.

SEA-KIT 18 m DP delivering Q3 2019 

The finals of the Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE competition are finally complete for the SEA-KIT™ and GEBCO-NF Alumni team. The passion and determination that all members of the team gave resulted in the finals running very smoothly and to plan. Now we patiently await the results and everyone in the team can catch up on some well earned rest. The article linked bellow was written by managing director of Hush Craft Ltd, Benjamin Simpson, giving details of the final mission and how it went.

 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/xprize-mission-benjamin-simpson/

On the 19^th of September 2018, Sea-Kit received a visit from the Department for Transport UK out in Horten, Norway where Sea-Kit is currently based. The visit started with an introduction to the minds behind Sea-Kit including Ben Simpson, managing director and Ash Skett, operations manager both for Hush Craft. The DfT team had a look around the base in Horten and were then shown a demonstration of Sea-Kit. The team was shown how Sea-Kit can be controlled remotely when near the vessel or for more manoeuvrability and convenience could be controlled via satellite from anywhere, not needing to be near the vessel. We were able to demonstrate this by using our equipment within the base in Horten. It was very important for us to show the team a demonstration as it bought everything they had heard to life, and they were able to witness Sea-Kit with their own eyes. After the demonstration the team had the chance to speak to the Sea-Kit team more, we were able to explain and discuss the Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE competition and our road to getting to the finals. It was important for us to explain our plans for Sea-Kit after the competition and the direction we want to head in. We would like to thank the Department for Transport for taking time out of their week to come and visit us, it was a great pleasure.

After a long silence, we are now finally delighted to reveal that we have made it to the final of the Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE competition! Please have a read of the article linked in the picture below, written by Jonathon Amos to update all readers on the competition.