Autonomous Pioneers
- Book + illustrated fold-out plates
When does technology become biology? The quest of gathering an understanding of the deep sea as one of the final frontiers on Earth required the creation and ongoing modification of advanced technologies. Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are constantly roaming the world’s oceans, collecting data and carrying out missions in remote and foreign territories. They are designed to persist in this alien world, going where humans cannot – or where it would be too dangerous, complicated, or cost-intense to send humans instead.
Efforts in optimising the underwater robots have turned to biomimetic design, creating efficient autonomous robots mimicking tunas, squid, deep-sea snailfish, and other aquatic species. Inspired by Darwin’s On the Origin of Species and scientifically illustrated tabular views of fossils, Autonomous Pioneers traces the evolution of AUVs from rigid machine bodies to biomimetic soft robots, speculatively viewing them as a new species and the new generation of ocean explorers. The book delves into questions such as “What defines an autonomous agent?”, “What makes a species a species?”, and “How could the oceans of the future populated by robots alongside real fish look like?”