2,000 years under the sea

Because he loved the sea and robots, Vincent Creuze chose underwater robotics. With Arthur, he designed the world's first robot dedicated to archaeology, capable of descending to a depth of 2,500 meters to bring back 2,000 years of history. Portrait-robot of a researcher anchored at Lirmm to better navigate between innovation and archaeology.

DRASSM - V. Creuze and D. Degez

It all happens far, far away, in the depths of the sea, where shipwrecks from ancient storms lie in total darkness. A small cubic mass flies with the lightness of a butterfly over treasures removed from the eyes of the world two millennia ago. Arthur is the first robot designed entirely for
archaeology. Able to descend to depths of 2,500 meters, it excavates, maps, films, samples...

Moonlight

To find its designer, let's go back up the cable that connects it to the Alfred Merlin, the vessel of the Drassm department of underwater archaeological research. On deck, with only the moonlight shining on the waves and dolphins and squid gliding silently around the boat, Vincent Creuze, a robotics researcher at the Montpellier
(Lirmm*) computer science, robotics and microelectronics laboratory, is fine-tuning Arthur's final settings. Everything will be ready when the archaeologists wake up in August 2022, to take part in the UNESCO campaign to explore ancient ships stranded in the Sicilian Channel.

They have been working on this robot with Olivier Templier, engineer at Lirmm, for nine years. Ever since the Drassm set them the crazy challenge of designing, within ten years, a robot capable of diving to a depth of 2,000 meters to investigate, with the delicacy of an archaeologist, the 200,000 or so shipwrecks lying at the bottom of French territorial waters. "Together we design everything, from the robot to the software and the electronic cards. Once at sea, I have to be able to control and repair everything," explains Vincent Creuze.

A suspended moment

It was in 2014 that his first archaeology robot saw the light of day. Speedy, a machine measuring 75 cm by 40 cm, equipped with a specially designed claw for gripping and reassembling samples. "When archaeologists saw it, they were dubious. They had imagined a bigger robot with an articulated arm, but when they saw it working, we won their confidence." Light, easy to pilot, fast and delicate, this prototype was a success, but it was stolen from the port of Marseille a few weeks later. I was desperate," recalls the researcher, "but fortunately I had managed to finance a second prototype.

Other robots followed: Leonard, Flipper, Basile, and finally Arthur, his very own Nautilus. The first capable of descending not to 2,000 meters, but to 2,500 meters, "and in 9 years instead of 10", says the man whose work was rewarded with the Innovation Prize of the University of Montpellier. With each successive mission, until he has become a regular on the Alfred Merlin, the researcher marvels at the cargoes of amphoras, finely chiselled glass bottles and even stone columns destined for temples their gods have yet to see. Vincent Creuze doesn't wait any longer, he savors: "Being at Arthur's helm is like being at the bottom of the ocean, it's a suspended moment, an incredible emotion".

Join Vincent Creuze in the La science s'aMuse podcast on September 30, 2020


*Lirmm (UM, CNRS, Inria, UPVD, UPVM)


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