Marine Bees

Eauligo is launching a horde of miniature robotic submarines that mimic the behavior of bees. Designed to be ultra-small to withstand the sea floor's immense pressures, and self-learning to guide themselves in an environment no one has visited, they also gain their strength in numbers, like the bees.

Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE

In 2016 the XPRIZE organisation launched the Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE, an international competition designed to introduce advanced technology to make unmanned deep sea exploration possible. By encouraging solutions that can be operated remotely, the contest hopes to provide humankind with more options to enable deep sea exploration and mapping.

Team Eauligo participated in the Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE until 2018 and progressed to the semi-final round with our unique Marine Bee design.

Agile Problem Solving

The intelligent miniature robots, named Marine Bees, mimic the coordinated operations of a hive to efficiently explore and image the ocean floor.

The Marine Bees operate from autonomous surface ships, the “hives.” Each surface ship manages a cell of Marine Bee robots, carrying them out to sea, launching them into the water and retrieving them after the dive.

During the dive, mission control communicates with the hives from shore; each hive communicates with its Marine Bee submarines. The ocean floor is unknown and its risks are unpredictable. Eauligo's solution is modeled on nature's genius for robust, self-protective design. If one of the bees fails to complete its task, we still gain the results from the rest of the swarm. This gives the Marine Bees a distinct advantage over solutions that approach the challenge with a single vehicle.

Efficient Design

The Bees' small size also give them an edge. They have many features of full-sized Autonomous Underwater Vehicles but are smaller and cheaper. We get a more cost-effective solution by mass-producing a large number of simple things, rather than building one complicated thing.

The design of each Marine Bee is unique, using components and manufacturing techniques from mass-produced consumer products. This drives down costs and permits Eauligo to quickly assemble an efficient swarm. The real advantage comes from putting hundreds of these small and simple robotic submarines together. Multiple Marine Bees provide scalable and low-cost exploration.