Hi-tech robots search for ancient shipwrecks lying on ocean floor

WASHINGTON - It would now be possible to access ancient shipwrecks lying on the ocean floor, thanks to new robotic submersibles.

These autonomous and remotely operated vehicles are capable of trawling the ocean floor at depths of up to 6,000 meters, to document ancient and recent shipwrecks, and recover key objects.

“RMS Titanic” is the most famous shipwreck to be visited by these vehicles.

A recent expedition brought back images documenting the current state of the ship, nearly 100 years after it sank following a collision with an iceberg.

Impressive 3D-HD images of the ship’s bow show it looking relatively intact, though seemingly dripping with eerie stalactites created by rust-eating microbes.

Alex Klingelhofer, of Collections at Premier Exhibitions, Inc., said that the primary goal of the recent expedition was to “map the wreck, and recover as much information as possible, so that we could really examine what the ‘Titanic’ site is.”

“A lot of the scientific information and imagery that we recovered during this expedition will be compared with what we already have from previous expeditions, and hopefully we will arrive at some sort of guess-timation of its condition,” CNN quoted her as saying. (ANI)