WIRED Staff
Culture

Slideshow: Aquabots to Explore Ancient Wreck

Robert Ballard, of rediscovery fame, will explore a 1,500-year-old shipwreck off the coast of Turkey. His submarine robots will explore what may be one of the best-preserved vessels from the ancient world and upload what they "see" to the Web. By Noah Shachtman.
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The top of a 35-foot-tall mast comes into view under the bright lights of the Argos, an underwater communications platform. The mast stands upright on a wooden ship found intact 1,000 feet below the surface of the Black Sea, 1,500 years after the ship was built.

See related story: Aquabots to Explore Ancient Wreck

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Dwight Coleman and Robert Ballard are counting on a remote-controlled robot called Hercules. The first craft designed specifically for deep-water archaeology, it's controlled by a pilot in Ballard's ship on the surface. By using special pressure-sensitive mandibles, Hercules' human operator can actually feel what the robot is grasping thousands of feet below.