Offshore Technology: Cybernetix

Marseille, France

Bryan Christie

No harsher environment for robots exists than the bottom of the sea—and no more alluring one, given recent advances in oil-discovery technology. Cybernetix is finally building functional submarines that qualify as robots, able to steer themselves to a target, recognize it, and manipulate it.

The company's several kinds of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) will all draw power from sources designed into undersea drilling rigs. So, while these vehicles cannot yet be used to build rigs, they should prove a cost-saving convenience for rig maintenance and repair companies. Cybernetix performed trials recently off the coast of Marseille, where the sea floor slopes steeply to a kilometer underwater, unlike the floor of the Atlantic, which slopes gently. Under these trying conditions, the prototype robosub proved its powers by opening and closing the simulated valves of a mocked-up rig with the claws of its hydraulically powered arms.

Today, the only way to do the job is with a remotely piloted vehicle, which requires two surface vessels—one, a specialized craft capable of paying out thousands of meters of cable to supply power and upload data, and the other, a spotter ship to help put everything in the right position. The AUV, on the other hand, needs just a single, ordinary surface supply ship. And while a remotely piloted vehicle costs US $80 000 a day to operate, the AUV would cost only $10 000 a day, according to Brian Morr, a British consulting engineer who works closely with Cybernetix. Additional economies are expected when the assurance of round-the-clock robotic repair makes it possible to build undersea equipment to less exacting standards.

Demand for such tools has arisen only in the past 10 years or so, as dramatic improvements in deep-sea prospecting have led oil companies to start drilling in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. These companies are now showing interest in potential fields off the coasts of Norway and Africa. Whether or not these prospectors make money, Cybernetix stands to do well selling them the modern-day pickaxes they need.

Lighting: Lumileds Lighting LLC

San Jose, Calif.

Cartoonists may soon have to give up that quintessentially Edisonian symbol of a new idea, the light bulb. Now comes the time of an even newer one, the light-emitting diode (LED), only recently strong enough to begin competing with the light bulb in a variety of applications in all the colors of the rainbow, plus white light.

Lumileds, a joint venture between Philips Lighting BV and Agilent Technologies Inc.—which inherited the optoelectronic division of Hewlett-Packard Co.—holds a strong hand in the long-life side of the business. Its Luxeon line provides 70 percent of peak power after 50 000 hours of use, says Steve Landau, the company's marketing communications manager. (For comparison, an ordinary incandescent light bulb typically lasts just 1000 hours or so.) Already the product figures in both interior and exterior architectural designs requiring that colored lamps be strewn in hard-to-service areas—underneath a bridge, say, or along the edge of a skyscraper.

Lumileds

Bridge Over The River Clyde:: Light-emitting diodes dramatically define three bridges over Glasgow's Clyde River. The 58-watt cool white LEDs emphasize the bridges' structure and create a blue reflection in the archways above the water.

Lumileds specializes in high-power LEDs, such as those that power the flash in the recently released Sendo X cellphone's camera. The advantages are clear: LEDs fit into very small spaces such as the ones available in these phones. Yet even for purposes that incandescent bulbs can obviously serve, such as car lights, compactness can be valuable. Small assemblies make engineering easier, especially when the LED's long life makes it acceptable to seal the assembly permanently. Toyota's Estima car, in Japan, powers its brake light with just one Luxeon LED (in red, of course, which happens to be the brightest available color). Audi AG this year included five of Lumileds' white LEDs in the assembly for a daytime running light in the 12-cylinder Audi A8.