Excavation performance experiment in the actual sea area of the seabed exploration robot with seawater resistant processing.

Abstract

Seabed mineral resources such as rare earth elements are widely and shallowly distributed in the deep sea floor 2-3m. Seafloor sampling and analysis are needed to determine their distribution. Vertical drilling with a drilling vessel is effective for depth sampling. However, it requires enormous cost and limits the sampling range to the pipe diameter. Therefore, we are developing a seafloor exploration robot that can excavate horizontally and collect rare earth samples. In this paper, we report the result of field test in an actual sea floor using an excavating robot with water proof finish.