An underwater robotic glider built by Rutgers University students and scientists has achieved the first underwater robot crossing, after traveling beneath the waves for 221 days.

Rutgers researchers joined some Spanish colleagues today aboard the "Investigador" ship to recover the drone, after launching it on April 27, 2009 off the coast of New Jersey. The submersible bot made its 4,591-mile journey at the slow but steady pace of 4 centimeters per second.

Named "The Scarlet Knight" for Rutgers sports — despite its fine yellow appearance — RU27 technically already claimed its transatlantic record on Nov. 14 after 201 days at sea. But the Rutgers team clinched the accomplishment after recovering the scarlet lady, and reportedly gave her a dose of champagne to celebrate.

Rutgers University alone has a small underwater fleet of up to seven gliders operating off the coast of New Jersey, with one even cruising around the Antarctic. The U.S. Navy has likewise deployed a number of drone submersibles (not to mention sea mammals), and private companies may also soon send out swarms of underwater explorers for oil prospecting.

Looks like Scarlet won't be too lonely the next time she decides to take a dip.

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The robot submarines are just the latest tool for the five "polar nations" currently jockeying for supremacy in the oil-rich Arctic Circle. Trouble is, there's no land mass up there, which is the traditional yard stick for territorial disputes, so the interested parties have taken to mapping the terrain underwater.

For Canada, this means determining where the Canadian continental shelf ends, and whether or not the subs can discern "geological links" between the country's northern coast, High Arctic Islands, and two underwater mountain ranges: the Alpha and Lomonosov ridges. The latter certainly sounds Russian, but who are we to get in the way of a little apocalyptic robot war, right? [Canada.com]

Called the Deep Flight Challenger, the submersible would have been "part spacecraft, part airplane and part submarine," Hawkes said. And somehow, thanks to the stuff street racers use to trick out their dashboards, the Challenger would have been capable of withstanding pressures of 20,000 pounds per square inch, (approximately 15,000 times the atmospheric pressure), he said.

The "stuff" we're referring to is carbon fiber, and Hawkes said he opted for that material over conventional technologies, which use titanium.

"The best and strongest materials such as titanium will only get you about halfway down to the ocean floor. We used carbon fiber that's laid down filament by filament under computer control, the same as what's used on rocket motor nozzles," he said.

Fossett's remains were found amidst his plane's wreckage last week, confirming what many people had already suspected about the doomed billionaire adventurer. The fate of the submersible is unknown. Currently, the design belongs to Fossett's estate. [Marinij]

Ballard agreed, and in 1984 set off to investigate. Thresher had been the most advanced attack sub of its time, but in 1963 had an accident during testing that left it without power. Ballard's robotic survey discovered that it had sunk so deep it imploded, turning into thousands of pieces. His 1985 search for the Scorpion—which had disappeared in 1968 with 99 crew, and was thought to be a victim of a Soviet attack—revealed such a large debris field that it looked "as though it had been put through a shredding machine." The survey data revealed the most likely cause of the loss of the sub was one of its own torpedoes going rogue and hitting the sub after firing.

Once the two wrecks had been visited, and the radioactive threat from both was established as small, Ballard was able to search for Titanic. Due to dwindling funds, he had just 12 days to do so, but he used the same debris-field search techniques he'd used for the two subs, and, of course, it worked. [The Times via Danger Room]

Exomos manufactures a variety of submarines, and the one pictured here is called Proteus, which can submerge to a depth of around 60 feet. Sixteen divers can sit on the fore and aft deck and hang on while the boat submerges, and at the same time eight people can sit inside the dry cabin and see out of its huge windows. Exomos also offers single-person subs, submersibles for military use, and spy subs, too. – Charlie White

Product site [Exomos, via The Cool Hunter]