VERTEX · Swarms of underwater robots for fast & accurate water quality measurements

The world's oceans & lakes are under increasing stress caused by the climate change & increasing pollution (primarily driven by increasing urbanization in developing countries), but littleThe world's oceans & lakes are under increasing stress caused by the climate change & increasing pollution (primarily driven by increasing urbanization in developing countries), but little is known about them as data is difficult & expensive to obtain. State-of-the-art technology is mostly high OPEX dedicated ships with a lot of labor needed to survey for hours.Hydromea has developed the miniature robotic Vertex submersible that can operate in swarms & measure the quality of large bodies of water much faster & more cost efficiently than the existing alternatives.Using swarms of miniature underwater robots. Hydromea provides a high-resolution underwater sensing service. Using the Vertex AUV, a small underwater robot, specifically designed in-house to be deployed in large swarms by 1-2 operators, Hydromea can provide consistent, high-density, 3D maps of many physical & chemical water parameters. Vertex swarms can collect 10-100x more information about environmental qualities in a single pass than is possible to collect with the current methods.With this technology we will commercialize a service where we will detect & map oil spills or discharged wastewater plumes, assess the environmental impact of construction projects & create detailed high-resolution maps charting the health of marine ecosystems. We will improve the state-of-the-art in coastal oceanology & limnology by drastically cutting the measurement costs with swarms of Vertex underwater drones. We have already had 1st market traction by selling custom high-performance components, developed in-house & signed commercial NDAs with major global oil/gas, dredging & research prospects like Schlumberger, Boskalis & Deltares.By 2022 we are aiming to build ~400+ AUVs reaching the overall sales revenues of ~15m & ~35 employees.