Robots clear waterways of deadly mines

PANAMA CITY BEACH, Fla. -- As it slowly moves in the shallow water along a beach, the robot splashes its fins like a small child playing in the surf. But the prototype device has a serious mission: destroying mines that could kill Marines and Navy SEALs as they come on shore. Such technology is considered the future of underwater bomb detection.

"It's a kamikaze vehicle, a suicidal robot," said Mathieu Kemp, a scientist with Durham, N.C.-based Nekton Research, LCC, which created the Transphibian.

The 3-foot-long device, which will some day carry 14 pounds of plastic explosives and attach itself to an underwater bomb before igniting, can be maneuvered by a joystick, which Kemp demonstrated last month at the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Fest, an annual two-week gathering of researchers who design robots for military use.

Experts with the Panama City Beach-based Naval Surface Warfare Center say such robots eventually will replace minesweeping ships and perform dangerous jobs now done by specialized divers.

A 2003 mine-clearing operation in the port of Um Quasar, Iraq, was a major test for autonomous underwater vehicles. The technology helped the U.S. Navy clear a path for a British ship carrying 200 tons of food and emergency supplies. It took the AUVs about 16 hours to search nearly a square mile and help divers locate an undisclosed number of mines — a task the Navy says would have taken 21 days for divers working without the technology.

In the future, scientists plan to put explosives on the AUVs to destroy the mines. Meanwhile, they are using them to quickly and accurately differentiate ocean clutter from mines.

"The closer in you get to any port or harbor, the greater amount of clutter you will encounter — tires, rocks, coral reefs — there can be so much clutter you would not believe it," said Daniel Broadstreet, a spokesman for the Naval Surface Warfare Center, which specializes in neutralizing underwater mines.

"To screen out all that clutter is a huge job and it takes some very, very technologically advanced sensors," Broadstreet said.