We have just taken another momentous step in the journey to unveil the hidden wonders of our own planet!

Since the launch of the Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Francisco in December 2015, individuals from around the world have been racing to form Teams and develop a range of groundbreaking technologies to access the deep-sea. Registration closed at the end of September 2016 with 32 bold Teams stepping forward to take on the challenge of mapping and imaging our ocean as never before.

Today, we announce the 21 semi-finalists Teams advancing in the Ocean Discovery XPRIZE. These innovative semi-finalist Teams, consisting of almost 350 individuals from 25 countries, represent a broad, impressive diversity of backgrounds and expertise, including middle and high school students, university students, maker-movement enthusiasts, and water and ocean industry professionals.

This diversity is also reflected in the array of technologies and techniques the semi-finalist Teams are developing. Some are proposing to use drones as a mechanism to drop subsea instruments into the water, while others are proposing to use drones that not only go through air, but then dive into the watery depths. Non-aerial Entries include autonomous surface vehicles carrying subsea robots that will return to the ‘mothership’ when their work is done, as well as vehicles and robots that will remain beneath the sea surface from the moment they leave the shore.

The 21 semi-finalist Teams will now have to prove their technology in the field in Round 1 testing, which will take place later this year. As with every XPRIZE, the Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE sets audacious goals. In Round 1, the Entries that these Teams are developing will have only 16 hours to map the sea-floor at depths of 2000m and produce a high-resolution map (at least 5m horizontal resolution, at least 0.5m vertical resolution) of at least 20% of the 500km2 Competition Area. Additionally, Teams will have to bring back 5 images of an archeological, biological, or geological feature, as well as an image of an object that we will specify. As if this wasn’t enough, they have an additional hurdle to overcome – they will have to deploy from the shore with no humans allowed in the competition area.

To put this challenge into perspective, it can take days to map 500 km2 of the ocean using current state-of-the-art technologies. If you want 5m accuracy, mapping can take over a week and requires going out on a ship, which can easily cost over $60,000 per day, making it a very expensive endeavor. The cutting-edge technology that will come out of this XPRIZE will truly revolutionize our ability to access the ocean.

In addition to the main Prize of $6 million, a dozen Teams have also opted to compete for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Bonus Prize of $1 million. These Teams are developing pioneering technology to detect a chemical or biological signal underwater and then autonomously track that signal back to its source.

Partnering with us to truly make this competition a global success are industry titans, Fugro and Esri. Fugro, the industry leader in ocean mapping and survey, will be provide the baseline maps against which the judging panel will assess the Entries. Esri, the global leader in GIS, is providing software to the Teams to produce their maps.

We are looking forward to an exciting competition with exponentially evolving technologies, including smart underwater robots, robot swarms, drones, and artificial intelligence to perform the tasks that have been laid out. These Teams will really take us where no one has gone before! As their journeys of discovery set sail, we invite you to follow the competion and this phenomenal mission to map our beautiful planet.

If you liked this article, you may also be interested in:

• XPRIZE calling all innovators to help map our ocean
• Unmanned and underneath: Stay in the know about underwater drones
• Into the deep: Underwater machines keep an eye on climate change
• What you need to know about underwater drones
• CoCoRo: Tracking the development of the world’s largest autonomous underwater swarm
• Ocean-going robot fleet successfully completes fish-tracking mission

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There is a very interesting planet near us. It has almost 130 million square miles of land and the longest continuous mountain chain in the solar system, spanning over 40,000 miles. This planet receives very little sunlight, so temperatures hover around 40C (39oF) regardless of the time of year, and atmospheric pressure is, on average, a crushing 400 times greater than our own. Our advanced probes tell us that there is very little oxygen and the environment is corrosive, so it is difficult to imagine anything living under these conditions. And yet we know with 100% certainty that life exists on this planet. Is this place real or science fiction? It’s real—and it’s only 4km away!

This is the planet at the bottom of our ocean.

Although it is so close to us, the deep ocean is a place we know very little about. We have better maps of Mars, hundreds of millions of miles away, than we do of our own sea floor. We don’t know how many volcanoes or mountains are hidden in the ocean, let alone what strange life forms exist down there. Less than 5% of the ocean has been explored because it is opaque and a physically challenging environment. It is also expensive to access; ships may cost over $60,000 per day to operate and vehicles that can go down into the deep sea can cost over $1 million. We need new breakthrough technologies that can help us to overcome the costs and can operate quickly and easily under great pressure in these cold and corrosive watery environments.

The Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE is a $7 million competition challenging teams from around the world to build advanced deep-sea underwater robots that will provide safe access to this tough environment, paving the way for autonomous, fast, and high-resolution ocean exploration. The success of this prize will result in technologies with which we can fully explore and map the ocean floor, uncovering our planet’s greatest wonder and allowing us to sustain and protect our deep-sea resources. We are also asking teams to advance our ability to see what is down there by producing high-resolution images of biological, geological, and archeological features. Embedded in this competition is a $1 million bonus prize from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to incentivize the development of smart technologies that can detect underwater chemical or biological signals and trace them to their source.

These breakthrough technologies will assist with search and rescue operations, giving us the ability to quickly and easily find planes and vessels that are lost at sea. The small fraction of the ocean we have explored has already provided us with potential treatments for cancer, Alzheimer’s, and AIDS. Imagine what other cures are down there. Underwater archeologists have uncovered long lost treasures from ancient shipwrecks such as the San Jose galleon off the coast of Columbia, shining a light on human history (it is estimated that there are 3 million shipwrecks at the bottom of the ocean). Our limited underwater images have shown astonishing creatures with abilities to camouflage themselves, generate their own electricity, and glow in the dark. What else might we discover if we could explore more of this vast resource?

By increasing our access to the ocean, we will increase our understanding of this wonderful and mysterious world, and by doing so we will realize it’s true value. The ocean is responsible for 50% of the oxygen we breathe, is the primary driver of our weather, and is a source of food for over 2 billion people. As such, it is a precious resource—and we need to make sure it remains healthy. The advances sparked by the Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE will also provide access and transparency in the deep-sea for better management and conservation efforts.

Join us on this grand adventure. We are calling all innovators to help us discover this new planet. Form a team and sign up to compete, spread the word, become a resource for teams, or follow us and find out about the mysteries of the deep at OceanDiscovery.xprize.org. Together, we can usher in a new and unprecedented age of ocean exploration.