Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Emerging Tech
  3. Photo Galleries
  4. News

This zippy RC submarine lets you explore beneath the waves

By
Add as a preferred source on Google

OpenROV’s Kickstarter campaign for its new Trident underwater drone is now live, and the early sales are impressive. The campaign has absolutely exploded on Kickstarter, reaching its goal within five minutes of launch. With 44 days still left to go, the consumer-oriented underwater vehicle has raised $370,000, exceeding its original goal of $50,000 by a factor of six. According to OpenROV, the Trident has the versatility of a ROV (remote operated vehicle) and combines it with the efficient operation of an AUV (Autonomous Underwater Vehicle). And with a starting price of $599 for the Kickstarter “Super Early Bird Special”, it’s no surprise the drone is selling like mad.

The Trident isn’t OpenROV’s first drone.The company kickstarted another model, the OpenROV – Open Source Underwater Robot, back in 2012. The original OpenROV drone was sold a kit that contained all the parts necessary to build the underwater vessel. Using their experience and feedback from the enthusiast community, the OpenROV team went to work on Trident. Trident features a hydrodynamic design that is efficient at flying through in the water in long, straight runs, yet maneuverable enough to slide in between underwater rocks and crevices. It’s also smaller than its predecessor with a form factor that allows the drone to fit in a backpack.

The Trident is packed to the max with features that make flying in the water fun. The ROV can fly in long, straight lines when surveying an area or perform delicate maneuvers when needed to navigate in tight spaces. The drone also includes LED lights for underwater viewing and a built-in HD camera capable of capturing images or videos that can be used to create a 3D model of the ocean floor. Similar to OpenROV’s earlier drone, the software that powers the Trident is open source, allowing enthusiasts to add new features.

Right now the Trident is selling out quickly, with the $599 and $799 packages no longer available. Interested buyers can still grab the discounted $949 or full price $1,199 bundle that includes the drone, as as well as a neutrally-buoyant tether for sending telemetry data back to the surface and a wireless topside buoy.

Kelly Hodgkins
Kelly Hodgkins
Former Contributor
Kelly's been writing online for ten years, working at Gizmodo, TUAW, and BGR among others. Living near the White Mountains of…
Topics
Chinese startup claims its brain implant takes just 10 minutes to place, no skull surgery required
StairMed Technology's vein-based BCI could beat Neuralink's roughly two-hour surgery on speed, but the device still hasn't undergone human trials.
Art, Plate, Crystal

Brain implants, like the ones made by Elon Musk's Neuralink, typically involve open-skull surgery. But a Chinese startup says it can skip that step entirely, threading its device into the brain through a vein in a procedure that reportedly takes as little as ten minutes. According to the South China Morning Post, Shanghai-based StairMed Technology is one of several companies pursuing this approach, as the country pushes to expand its homegrown brain-computer interface (BCI) industry.

Faster than Neuralink, on paper

Read more
This bizarre email flaw is leaking corporate secrets to anyone who buys the right domain
Security researchers discovered companies are accidentally sending sensitive emails to domains that outsiders can register.
Maill app icon notifications

You don't always need to hack into a company's systems to get its secrets. Sometimes, the company will simply email them to you. A new report by WIRED's Matt Burgess has uncovered a bizarre email security problem in which companies are inadvertently sending sensitive information to domains that can be registered and controlled by outsiders. Security researchers Cory Solovevich and Mike Sheward discovered that seemingly harmless addresses such as noreply and deleteduser can become unexpected gateways to corporate information when the domains behind them aren't properly controlled.

The "hack" is buying the right domain

Read more
I found 3 ChatGPT features that turned out to be way more useful than I expected
ChatGPT on iPhone

I use ChatGPT pretty much every day, but somewhere along the way, I’ve also developed a habit of poking around and looking for features I haven’t tried yet. Some discoveries are genuinely useful, while others are the kind I’ll probably remember once every six months.

Every once in a while, though, I stumble across something that actually changes how I use ChatGPT. That happened recently with three features I’d somehow been overlooking. I’ve started using all three regularly now, and if you spend a lot of time in ChatGPT too, I think you’re missing out by not giving them a shot.

Read more