The new project “DeepSea Protection” has been launched.

The project involves the development, set-up and testing of a multi-sensory monitoring system for production-related environmental protection in deep-sea mining.

The research objectives of the project include

– the entire hardware and software of the system

– communication and navigation

– data processing and

– display of the measured values,

which are robust and reliable in the deep sea environment.

On the hardware side, this means the development and integration of pressure-neutral motors for the ground stations and the underwater vehicles and of tailor-made sensors, as well as power, control and evaluation electronics miniaturised by means of embedding technology.

For long-term protection against the effects of seawater, the surfaces of the system components are sealed with inert protective layers (e.g. parylene and multilayer coatings).

The project is funded by the PTJ (ProjektträgerJülich) as part of the “Maritime Research Programme of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi)”. Research partners include

– EvoLogics GmbH, Sea & Sun Technology GmbH,

– Sensorik Bayern GmbH,

– PlascoTec GmbH,

– Technical University of Berlin,

– Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration (IZM),

– Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research (IGD)

– Aalen University of Applied Sciences.