Diving Alone?

A New Innovative Solution

Diving alone can be a dangerous adventure. There is a project underway to make this activity safer. The project is called CADDY which stands for  Cognitive Autonomous Diving Buddy. It involves the use of a robot, actually a pair of robots to monitor the diver’s activities.

According to Professor Salih Murat Engi, the project’s coordinator, half of diving accidents involve solo scuba divers.

The following is an excerpt from an article by Bernard Wilchusky.

Can submersible drone technology help make solo diving a safer activity? Researchers at Divers Alert Network Europe are testing an underwater drone and floating satellite designed to understand the body language of a scuba diver in distress.

The underwater drone is capable of assessing a diver’s behavior for any signs of distress, and the surface drone maintains a communication link to a command center or surface team. Together, the two drones ensure that a diver is in constant communication with outside sources, even if the diver is disabled or harmed.

In case of emergency, the drones are equipped with lights, cameras and navigation systems, and are able to guide a diver back to safety.

The CADDY project replaces a human buddy diver with an autonomous underwater vehicle and adds a new autonomous surface vehicle to improve monitoring, assistance, and safety of the diver’s mission.

You can read the entire article at scubadiving.com.