It was revealed that "Team Kuroshio", in which the Institute of Industrial Science, the University of Tokyo participated, passed the technical proposal examination in the international race of deep sea exploration competing for the technology of wide area high-speed seafloor mapping. Advance to the actual sea area test round 9 to be held around September.
According to KDDI R & D Laboratories, Team Kuroshio includes the Institute of Industrial Science, University of Tokyo, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Maritime / Port / Aviation Technology Research Institute, Kyushu Institute of Technology, KDDI R & D Laboratories, Mitsui Shipbuilding, and Nippon Marine Enterprises. Participated.
Team Kuroshio passed the examination of the technical proposal and decided to advance to Round 1.Twenty-one teams from all over the world will advance to Round 1 to compete on whether they can create a seafloor topographic map of 21 square kilometers or more within 2,000 hours on the seabed at a depth of 16 meters, or take five photographs of important points.
This international race is an event held by European oil giant "Royal Dutch Shell" and US private foundation "X Prize", and will be held around September next year after being ranked in the top 9 in Round 1 in September. Advance to Round 10.The winning team in Round 9 will receive a prize of $ 2 million.
Many resources such as rare metals are sleeping in the deep sea, but the range of investigation by the conventional deep sea explorer is narrow, which has been a big barrier to commercialization.This international race was planned with the aim of encouraging the development of new technologies that enable the investigation of seafloor conditions in a short period of time, with the aim of making full-scale use of seafloor resources in the deep sea.
