Heroic Machines
Nobody has to go in first.
We build autonomous machines for the three hardest jobs in the water — finding what sank, reaching a swimmer who is drowning, and staying at a depth that would crush almost anything else.
- Search
- Six coordinated nodes are mapping the bottom while the dive team is still rigging.
- Rescue
- A flotation tube is in the water before a guard has crossed the sand.
- Depth
- A hull designed for the deepest water on Earth, and to stay there.
What we make
Three systems, one idea: send the machine, keep the person.
Every one of these jobs is currently done by putting a human being into water that is cold, dark, moving, or deep enough to kill them. A diver sweeps a search grid by hand. A lifeguard swims a hundred meters and arrives out of breath. Nobody at all works the trenches.
Our machines are built to be thrown in and left to work: they coordinate with each other rather than with an operator, they carry their own positioning, and they come out of a case that two people can carry to the bank.
CAST
Coordinated Aquatic Search & Tracking
A vehicle leaves a road at night and ends up in the reservoir. That starts a search: a boat, a towed sonar, a grid drawn on a chart, and a dive team sitting on the bank while somebody drags a sensor back and forth across forty acres of water.
CAST replaces the boat with a team. Six spherical nodes come out of one case, go over the side, and spread out. They float, hold station on GPS, and build a communications mesh among themselves. Each one maps the bottom underneath it, and the six pictures resolve into one searchable picture of what is down there.
Divers go in when there is something to go in for.
HALO
Hazard Alert & Lifesaving Operations
Drowning is quiet. A swimmer in trouble usually cannot wave and cannot call out, and the whole event can be over in under a minute, in front of a full beach, without anybody noticing.
HALO watches the water continuously and recognizes that pattern before a person does. When it does, two things happen at once: the guards get a callout with a position, and an aerial drone launches carrying a rescue tube. The tube goes in beside the swimmer. The drone holds station overhead until somebody reaches them, then returns and resets for the next one.
It does not replace a lifeguard. It gets there first.
HADAL
High-pressure Autonomous Deepwater Adaptive Loiterer
Hadal is the name oceanographers give the deepest part of the ocean — the trenches, from about 6,000 meters down to roughly 11,000. Very little built by people goes there at all, and what does goes briefly, on a tether or a schedule, and comes straight back up.
HADAL is built to stay. The hull is a sphere and every internal volume is flooded with clear oil, so there is no air space left to collapse. There are no exposed propellers: an internal magnetic drive turns a ring around the outside of the hull, and the drive and ring pivot on two axes for 350° of steering authority. Ballast sets its depth. It holds a position, moves to a new one, and remains on task.
An experimental platform. Its applications are naval, and they include mine warfare.
Autonomy that survives losing you
Search water and open ocean are both places where the link drops. Each machine holds its task, its position and its safety envelope on its own, and reports when it can rather than waiting to be told.
Coordination, not a single sensor
One instrument sweeping an area is slow, and its answer is only as good as the track it was towed along. Several machines working the same area at once cover it faster and cross-check each other.
Deployable by the people who are already there
A system that needs a crane and a vessel arrives after it mattered. CAST goes into the water off a boat ramp, out of a case, by the crew on scene.
Talk to us
We would rather hear the specifics of your water than send you a brochure. Tell us where you operate and what you are trying to find or protect.
Start a conversation
Agencies, port authorities, parks and beach operators, and program offices. We answer everything.
We reply from a person, not a sequence. You will get one confirmation email to check the address is yours, and nothing else unless you ask for it.