Robot vs. Volcano: “Sometimes It’s Just Fun to Blow Stuff Up” (Exclusive) | National Geographic

It was a dedicated mission to take technology to the absolute limits and then destroy it. Oh yeah, those guys got to be careful. I don't think we can get much closer to a big seismic event underwater than this. We were at Kavachi a couple years ago and we found sharks living in the crater of the volcano, which is really wild because it's one of the most active submarine volcanoes in the world. Once you find that, it's like we're in. We got a lot more to check out.

Oh, that was sick! We're going to the volcano to blow up robots. They measure things like water temperature, CO2, pH, but sometimes it's just fun to blow stuff up. Just exuberant! These robots are designed to be as simple as possible, which in this case is some used PVC sewer pipe that was found in the village. And then you just kind of put some relatively fancy electronics onto that and wh... oh, you have an autonomous boat!

Yeah, so as we get closer to Kavachi, we see things like Barracuda, dog fish, tuna, rainbow runner, and then also the sharks that are swimming in and out. We start asking why they go in there in the first place. Do they sense an eruption and then get out of there, or are they just caught up in it and blown up in the air? Chances are not, but really, it's an open question.

Morgan is one of our guides, and he's the highest respected navigator in that region. We're watching the volcano and out of nowhere, he just kind of quietly says, "Part do one." Within 10 seconds of him saying that, a volcano did its biggest eruption of the day. Morgan somehow knew!

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"Scar Kavi W robot zero."

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Yeah, it's still there! I've got its last start recording. Can you take a photo?

What just happened? Well, one of the greatest things in marine science: we've just witnessed the world's first blowing up of a robot from a volcano! We swoop in, we pick up the robot; it kind of looks like a mess, but it was a beautiful mess and it collected samples. There are pieces of hot ash—they're sticking into the robot right now—that was hot melted lava just a few minutes ago.

We're going to take these samples and we're going to give it to one of the leading submarine vulcanologists in the world, and it's going to be the freshest piece of Earth he's ever held in his hands. You're not going to get much fresher than that!

We're in the midst of a robotic renaissance. The parts that are required to make robots move and perceive their environment are getting cheaper and cheaper and more accessible. That's really when the big discoveries come, I think. So it's a very exciting time to be a roboticist.

Oh, big one! Oh, that was—that was the biggest one yet!

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