Robot brings deep-sea images of wrecks to life

A marine robot designed and built by researchers at the University of Limerick has gathered spectacular images from deep Atlantic waters off the south coast of The Aud and a First World War U-boat.

The Aud was scuttled by its crew while under Royal Navy escort to Cork Harbour after it was prevented from landing guns in a rendezvous with Roger Casement in 1916, while the German UC-42 submarine sank in 1917 while laying mines.

With the help of the Irish Naval Service vessel, LÉ Eithne, the UL Marine Robotics team deployed its first-of-a-kind smart robot called ROV Latis.

UL researcher Daniel Toal said: “The ROV Latis allowed us to explore in detail the wrecks which have been on the sea-bed for nearly 100 years. The ROV Latis brought back high-quality imagery which has been used to build a detailed 3D model of the UC-42.”

The investigations entailed high-resolution sonar survey combined with video survey with instruments developed by team member Edin Omerdic. This was used to build a three-dimensional model of the U-boat on the seabed.

The expedition also involved an Irish Naval Service dive team.

Mr Toal said: “The operating of the ROV control cabin aboard ship gives the surface pilot and scientists an immersive reality transparent ocean view of the underwater world as if they were sitting on the submerged vehicle and the ocean was made transparent well beyond the limits of video imagery in the underwater world.”

The team is currently commercialising the technology.

The U-boat location was discovered by Eoghan Kieran of Moore Marine during a geophysical survey of the area.

The archaeological wreck investigations of the survey aboard LÉ Eithne were carried out by the UL team together with Moore Marine and Garret Duffy of NUI Galway. The team also included Martin Dean, a specialist working in advanced geophysical survey of wrecks and submerged structures.