XPRIZE Announces $7 Million Shell Ocean Discovery Competition to Advance Ocean Technologies for Rapid and Unmanned Ocean Exploration
December 14, 2015
Today at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Francisco, Dr. Richard Spinrad, NOAA’s chief scientist, joined Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, chairman and CEO of XPRIZE, and David Schewitz, Shell vice president of geophysics for the Americas, on stage to announce the launch of the $7 Million Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE . The global, three-year competition challenges teams to advance ocean technologies and create solutions that advance the autonomy, scale, speed, depths, and resolution of ocean exploration. The competition provides an opportunity for the vital innovation needed to illuminate the largely unknown deep sea and usher in a new era of ocean exploration.
Throughout the three-year competition, teams will complete a series of tasks, including making a bathymetric map (a map of the seafloor); producing high-resolution images of a specific object; and identifying archeological, biological, or geological features. Teams must also demonstrate resiliency and durability and prove their technologies can operate at a depth of up to 4,000 meters.
As part of the total $7 million prize, NOAA, through the National Sea Grant College Program, is offering a $1 million bonus prize to teams that demonstrate technology that can find a specified object in the ocean through biological and chemical signals and trace its source.
“The goal of the $1 million NOAA bonus prize is to identify technology that can aid in detecting sources of pollution, enable rapid response to leaks and spills, identify hydrothermal vents and methane seeps, as well as track marine life for scientific research and conservation efforts,” said Spinrad.
With the XPRIZE competition and continuing scientific and technological advances, our ability to observe the ocean environment and its resident creatures is beginning to catch up with our imaginations, expanding our understanding and appreciation of this still largely unexplored realm. OER looks forward to the novel technologies and solutions that result from the XPRIZE competition.
NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration and Research (OER) is the only federal organization currently dedicated to exploring our unknown ocean. OER invests in new technologies and state-of-the-art platforms and vehicles, and the advancement of existing technologies will allow us to explore the ocean in increasingly systematic, scientific, and noninvasive ways.