Researchers at the NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are working on a project to improve the technologies of the current submersibles through the implementation of artificial intelligence to help the underwater robots to do scientific missions, writes UPI.com. The researchers at the NASA, in collaboration with the scientists from the Science at Remote Sensing Solutions, Barnstable, Massachusetts, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Woods Hole, Massachusetts, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, Moss Landing, California and from Caltech in Pasadena are currently working on the development of a program of artificial intelligence for the submersible devices. NASA does a series of tests in the gulf of Monterey using underwater drones.

They are scheduled to do measurements that include the waters’ temperature or the salinity and use weather forecasts transmitted through satellites to plan the routes of the travel. The artificial intelligence will allow them to observe the changes at the level of the water of the oceans in real time, the scientists seeking to be able to integrate the two types of information, the connection of the analyzes in real time with the schedules on the long term.’In order to study unpredictable ocean phenomena, we need to develop submersibles that can navigate and make decisions on their own, and in real-time. Doing so would help us understand our own oceans and maybe those on other planets’, said Steve Chien, the head of the Artificial Intelligence Group from JPL.

‘Our goal is to remove the human effort from the day-to-day piloting of these robots and focus that time on analyzing the data collected’, said Andrew Thompson, assistant professor of environmental science and engineering on Caltech. ‘We want to give these submersibles the freedom and ability to collect useful information without putting a hand in to correct them’, said Thompson, as it can be read on the JPL website.