The oceans may cover more than 70% of the Earth’s surface, but there are maps of the moon rather than the seabed. There is a good reason for this. The seabed is obscure and the harsh environment makes it difficult for humans to send back. However, as the robot improves, it may eventually take a clearer picture of deeper by.
While there are many startups racing to map the oceans in more detail, the latest fresh funding is Bedrock Ocean, which recently closed its $25 million Series A-2 round led by the Primary and Northzone. Autopilot, Costanoa Ventures, Harmony Partners, Katapult and Mana Ventures participated.
Bedrock Ocean has developed an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) that can run up to 12 hours from lithium-ion batteries, using sonar and magnetic sensors to map the floor.
Traditionally, the seabed is mapped by large ships, with powerful sonar pulsed down into the water column. These ships cover fuel, require human operators, are expensive to sail, and disrupt marine life.
“Can pots at the end of the rainbow that everyone has been chasing for 20 years replace traditional ships?” Brandon Mah, COO of Bedrock Ocean, told TechCrunch.
The rock ocean AUV is still fired from the ship, but it then operates independently underwater. Two of them can cover the same ground as one traditional mapping vessel, and one 40-foot vessel can carry 10-12 AUVs, he said.
Bedrock designs and builds its own AUVs, but Mah said it costs less than $1 million each. The company has also developed its own software to operate AUVs and perform mappings. AUVS stores data locally and performs the processing that is in the air. When sending, the data surfaces over Wi-Fi and sends it to the ship. The Starlink antenna on the ship can light that information against the cloud.
“We can see that our data is the quality we are targeting and identify potential targets that we want to investigate further in near real time,” Mah said.
Submarines sail 5-10 meters from the seabed, allowing AUVs to use more powerful sonar than ship-based mapping. Mah said bedrock sonar is less harmful to marine mammals because it is out of audible range in frequency, has less power and is deployed near the seabed.
The bedrock can place items on the seabed with an accuracy of 1-2 meters. This is because ship-based investigations could be provided under sub-meter accuracy, and AUVs lose their GPS signals after diving. To determine its location in the water, they rely on inertial navigation, which is not as accurate as GPS.
Mah argues that while not all investigations require submeter accuracy, many operations on the seabed will benefit from faster mapping. Offshore wind developers may pay in advance to investigate submeters, but when it’s time to build, a 2m accuracy could be enough.
The startup has been conducting paid research work on offshore wind, oil and gas and environmental assessments over the past two quarters. The speed of assessments and the ability to quickly display data is also attracting attention from the US Navy. “We showed off that ability,” Mar said. “They were blown away a bit.”
7pm ET: Brandon Mah is the COO of Bedrock Ocean and not CEO as mentioned previously.