Among the greatest challenges of ocean exploration has been the development of instruments that can travel into the opaque depths, endure the crushing pressures for a brief time, and return even a snapshot of data.  Ocean Science has long relied on cumbersome pressure vessels to protect terrestrial electronics and optics into the deep.

Today however, many solid-state electronics can be adapted to function, bathed in oil, directly exposed to high pressures. The use of "pressure-tolerant electronics" has become the preferred technique for deep applications and are common elements of many AUV's. It is subsea optics that have stubbornly refused to surrender their air spaces, maintaining our reliance on pressure vessels. 

​

Optonautics has undertaken a study in pressure-tolerant opto-electronics based on reflective, fluid-filled optical systems.  These optics could become a photonics enabler for compact pressure-tolerant AUV camera-ships and other subsea imaging platforms.

​

Optonautics' primary research pursuits presently include the development of a compact suite of pressure-tolerant optical devices. Complementing our minimalist AUV, compact optical instruments can enable more feature-rich and cost-effective vision-based tools for exploring the deep. Development efforts include a gimballed 4K stereo "WALRUS" imager  and a compact, pressure-tolerant Laser Line Scan (LLS) module.