It is exactly 4:08 p.m. on February 11, 2022, when the long-awaited message is finally sent to the robotic command post of theAlfred-Merlinthe ship of the Department of Underwater and Underwater Archaeological Research (Drassm), stationed off the coast of Corsica: “490 meters. We are at the bottom and approaching. » 3D glasses placed on his nose, his back bent slightly forward, Professor Oussama Khatib, of Stanford University (California), tries to distinguish something on the screen which, in front of him, diffuses the images stereoscopic images sent by the cameras fitted to the two eyes of his humanoid robot, Ocean One. Only the right hand of the prototype is currently visible. Closed, she still firmly holds between her four mechanical fingers the handle of the grappling hook that was entrusted to her, a little earlier, on the surface.
The probe indicates 496 meters of depth when, finally, the wreck of the Francesco-Crispi draw a silhouette on the dark blue of the background. Seizing the two force feedback arms which he will soon use to pilot, the roboticist takes control of the machine and directs it towards the enormous ocean liner sunk by the English in April 1943, at a depth of 507 meters, off Bastia, with the 900 Italian soldiers then on board. Already, the rusty hull with the gaping wounds of the martyred building is getting closer, revealing, through the mist of zooplankton and the clouds of shrimp panicked by the light, chimneys, windsocks and footbridge. All in three dimensions and giving the eye the perception of the depths of this incredible landscape, made up of a tangle of devastated bridges, steel beams, tangled ropes and gutted ports in the middle of which slide enormous cerniers and congers.
Two arms with seven joints
Turning to the left, Ocean One skirts the ship on the port side, revealing sides covered with thousands of encrusting organisms, sponges, lichens and bushes of white coral… when Osama Khatib notices a half-collapsed railing facing the cabins of the first classes. After rotating the robot’s head, he makes it raise an arm, which comes to rest and adjust the grapple on the balustrade, creating sensations of weight, hardness and roughness, instantly transmitted, beyond the 500 meters of the water column, up to its controls. « Open the hand ! Open the hand ! » (“Open your hand!”), he commands.
Two meters long and weighing two hundred kilos, a mobile head and two camera eyes, two arms with seven joints extended by interchangeable hands with four or five fingers, an orange-coloured body in the shape of a sarcophagus equipped with eight propellers… Ocean is back One. Or more exactly, the “K” version of this humanoid prototype capable of being remotely controlled for archaeological operations in an underwater environment.
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