On March 8, 2014, a passenger plane bound for Beijing took off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia. Less than two hours later, it vanished from radar while over the Indian Ocean.

The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 launched one of the most expensive search operations in aviation history. Despite three years of scouring the ocean with sonar, submersibles, and underwater robots, authorities never found the plane. The tragic event spurred speculation and even conspiracy theories. In a world of satellites and cellphones, it seems impossible that something as big as an airplane could go missing.

“Yet to ocean experts, and to the search and rescue teams that hunted for MH370 for nearly three years, the airplane’s disappearance was far from odd or conspiratorial,” writes James Bellingham, a professor of exploration robotics at Johns Hopkins University, in his new book, How Are Marine Robots Shaping Our Future? “Rather, it was further confirmation of what we’ve known as long as humans have gone to sea: The ocean fiercely protects its secrets.”

For centuries, explorers have waxed poetic about the ocean making them feel small—and rightfully so. Oceans cover 71% of our planet’s surface, and less than 30% of it has been mapped in detail. “The ocean both increasingly sustains us and connects us,” Bellingham says. “It’s a very important part of our lives and will be more so in the future, and we don’t understand it very well at all.”

For over 25 years, Bellingham has endeavored to change that. He is a pioneer in the invention and development of autonomous underwater vehicles, known as AUVs. Bellingham’s creations have accessed thousands of miles of unexplored underwater terrain, reached the darkest depths, and made the ocean more accessible to research. Today, these AUVs can dive deeper, stay out at sea longer, create high-resolution seafloor maps, and process samples for vital environmental studies. His underwater robots are allowing humans to safely discover, map, and demystify Earth’s largest and most formidable frontier. “I have this desire to explore,” Bellingham says of what led him to marine robotics. “I think most of us have that. It’s part of what makes us human.”

This work has taken him all over the globe and put him in collaboration with many of the world’s most dedicated engineers and oceanic researchers. “There are very few other enterprises that offer a similar combination of interesting people, tough intellectual problems, opportunity to work in the most remote and beautiful parts of the planet, and the satisfaction of contributing to an important endeavor,” he wrote in a paper about his career.

Here, we share the evolution of a few of Bellingham’s most pivotal inventions and where he plans on going next.

Sea Squirt

Built in 1989, Bellingham’s first AUV was a squat yellow cylinder, and it represented a significant leap forward in how these devices functioned. At the time, a remotely operated vehicle had recently been used to discover the wreckage of the Titanic. That machine weighed 4,000 pounds and couldn’t move on its own, instead having to be dragged by a ship. Bellingham’s Sea Squirt was an attempt to build a lighter, nimbler device that could operate without a boat. It was easier to operate and could function on its own battery power for hours, which was revolutionary. Despite its rudimentary design, Sea Squirt helped spark a wave of interest in marine robotics. Those studying and working in the ocean also grew excited at the prospect of robots navigating the waters, mapping the seafloor, collecting samples, and staying submerged for longer periods of time.

Bluefin-21

In 1997, Bellingham cofounded Bluefin Robotics, where he continued developing AUVs and other underwater vehicles. One of the most important developments from this company was a floating platform where AUVs could dock to dump their payloads and swap out their batteries.

The platform removed the need for large ships to launch and recover AUVs while vastly increasing the amount of work AUVs could do.

It was here that Bellingham developed the Bluefin-21, a torpedo-shaped vehicle with state-of-the-art mapping systems capable of reading the seafloor with remarkably high resolution. When flight MH370 went missing, Bellingham helped coordinate the deployment of a Bluefin-21.

The ocean area “was half a mile deeper than the map said it should be,” Bellingham says. As Bluefin-21 mapped that region, “they realized that it wasn’t the smooth seafloor environment that their maps said it was. In fact, it was a very mountainous terrain with ravines and canyons and all kinds of incredible bottom features.”

With Bluefin-21, those tasked with locating the plane were able to map an area roughly the size of Disney World each day. The AUV could search for 16 hours a day and dive as deep as 15,404 feet. After 21 days of searching, it had created a map of the seafloor the size of Chicago and discovered numerous shipwrecks, volcanoes, trenches, and seamounts.

Odyssey Class

Bellingham’s next AUV, Odyssey, was developed when he helped to run the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sea Grant College Program in the early 1990s. It had the ability to go deeper—up to 20,000 feet—making it capable of reaching 99% of the ocean. To test their cuttingedge invention, Bellingham and his colleagues took Odyssey to Antarctica in 1993. The AUV reached the bottom of the Bellingshausen Sea and photographed penguins swimming. The next iteration, Odyssey II, was able to cruise under the ice and collect data, a boon for Arctic researchers. Over time, the AUVs in this class got smaller, smarter, and more cost-effective. Researchers relished the opportunity to use them, as did those in industry and the military. The Office of Naval Research was one of the first to see its potential, supporting Bellingham’s work and requesting purpose-built AUVs. His AUVs were soon used for seafloor mapping, oil and gas discovery, minesweeping, search and rescue, studying ocean conditions, and more.

Tethys Class Long-Range AUV

Tethys was developed in 2010 by Bellingham and his colleagues at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California. The goal: create an AUV capable of running longer, farther, and faster. For most AUVs, operators had to travel hundreds of miles offshore to launch them, but Tethys “can launch from shore,” Bellingham says. “It doesn’t require a ship at all.” This lightweight AUV can’t go deeper than 5,000 feet below the ocean’s surface, but it can travel at high speed for weeks at a time while carrying tools to collect data. For example, Tethys can track and follow an algae bloom from the moment it forms until it dies, taking critical microbial measurements along the way. It can also monitor water quality and conduct surveys for ocean topographies, such as hydrothermal vents.

What’s Next?

Bellingham is working on robots equipped with artificial intelligence that can adapt to changing conditions and make decisions on the fly. AI could help these robots self-diagnose technical problems and come up with solutions. For example, one of Bellingham’s AUVs was recently cruising in Monterey Bay when it was bitten by a great white shark. The AUV survived with minimal damage, but those who launched it didn’t know what had happened until the AUV returned to them. “All of these new AI techniques are just advancing by leaps and bounds,” Bellingham says. “We’re still figuring out how to make [this technology] more trustworthy.”

This article originally appeared on in the Johns Hopkins Magazine >>