Uncrewed Systems Technology 047 l Aergility ATLIS l AI focus l Clevon 1 UGV l Geospatial insight l Intergeo 2022 report l AUSA 2022 report I Infinity fuel cell l BeeX A.IKANBILIS l Propellers focus I Phoenix Wings Orca

114 PS | Seabed ‘harvesting’ robots M ining is generally considered a particularly damaging activity for the environment, and the prospect of mining the seabed for industrially important metals is a controversial one (writes Peter Donaldson). It is also a major focus for developments in robotic technologies, and by carefully and selectively picking up metal-bearing nodules from the ocean floor in deep water it could minimise its impact. The nodules contain metals used in lithium-ion batteries, including manganese, nickel, cobalt and copper – sometimes in a single ore – plus lithium itself and less sought after metals such as iron. They occur in highest concentrations in the Indian and Pacific oceans, mostly in international waters. So far, the UN has granted licences for only 19 exploration missions, 16 of them in the 4.5 million km 2 Clarion-Clipperton Zone, between Mexico and Hawaii, in water between 4000 and 5500 m deep. Each mission can operate within an area of around 75,000 km 2 . An area of that size is estimated to be capable of yielding 1.5 million tons of ‘wet’ nodules annually, providing enough nickel for 400,000 typical electric car batteries a year, enough manganese for 18 million, and cobalt for 100,000. Most of the mining proposals involve using dredging machinery or giant robotic seabed crawlers that take the top 15 cm of sediment to extract the nodules, which are piped up to a surface ship. Dredgers and crawlers would stir up a plume of sediment, with the surface ship discharging it after separating the nodules. However, Impossible Metals (formerly Impossible Mining) is developing a gentler alternative based on AUVs with multiple pick-and-place arms to ‘harvest’ the nodules, and using biochemical processing to extract the metals without creating toxic ore residue, known as tailings. In this process, multiple AUVs are deployed from a surface ship, descending to just above the sea floor where they use an AI system that processes a camera feed to select each nodule, and a system of multiple three-finger arms to collect them. When their hoppers are full, the AUVs return to the ship for offloading and battery recharging. The AI is programmed to avoid nodules with signs of life on them, and the idea is for the system to also leave behind a patchwork of unaffected nodule areas so that, hypothetically, the ecosystem should continue to function. The company is also designing manipulator arms that improve on those typically used in the offshore industry, taking inspiration from ‘parallel robot’ technology used in pick-and-place systems in the manufacturing industry. In parallel arms, the actuators are stationary relative to the end effector, providing the speed and precision required by this application for targeted actuation. If this technology works as the company expects it to, it will be a very clean and gentle form of extraction compared with most of what has gone before. However, removing nodules will inevitably have an impact on what are still poorly understood ecosystems, especially as the nodules develop extremely slowly, growing at between 1 and 10 mm per million years. Now, here’s a thing “ ” December/January 2023 | Uncrewed Systems Technology AUVs descend to just above the sea floor where they use an AI system and a camera feed to select each nodule and avoid any with signs of life on them