Swiss technology goes underwater, makes appearance at KORMARINE Exhibition, Korea

by Andrej Studer, Master Student in Robotics, 21 October 2021
Proteus at Tiefenbrunnen, Zurich having one of its first dives (photo credit: Gallus Kaufmann)

How our robot went from the basement to a world stage for underwater technology.

In 2018, Christian Engler felt he’d studied enough theory at the ETH Zurich and longed to put it all into practice. It was evident to Christian that the best way to get hands-on experience was to start something himself. Others were not so sure. Especially when they heard about his ambition to revive a project from high school.

The project involved underwater robots, also known as Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs). But now Christian wanted to step it up a gear. He not only wanted to build an ROV, he also wanted to take part at the international MATE ROV Competition 2019 – the biggest ROV competition in the world. His passion motivated a further seven students and Tethys Robotics was born.
SCUBO taking a sunbath at Lake Zurich (photo credit: Gallus Kaufmann)

Start of the journey

To be able to compete at a high level, we needed support. The main supporter was and still is Professor Siegwart and his Autonomous Systems Lab (ASL). Due to a previous project, SCUBO, we had the chance to benefit from their experience and were able to use their shell to build our version of the underwater robot, the SCUBO 2.0.

The only downside was that the ASL did not have enough space to accommodate us. Therefore, we ended up working in the lab’s basement. But this did not affect our motivation – now complete with ‘garage start-up’ vibe – or the successful outcome. Tethys Robotics was the first Swiss team ever to compete, and we did our country proud. Out of 75 teams, we came in at 9th place.

Real world applications

After the competition, SCUBO 2.0 was showcased at various exhibitions. This is how we came across the divers from the Swiss Explosive Ordnance Disposal, whose mission is to retrieve lost ammunition from Swiss lakes. Since this is a dangerous and very challenging task for divers, we started collaborating on an underwater robot up to the task. The robot had to be modular, lightweight, and easily deployable. After one year of development, Proteus was born.
Sunset at Lake Zurich with a glimpse of Proteus (photo credit: Gallus Kaufmann)
First encounter of Proteus with a school of fish, Lake Thun (photo credit: Gallus Kaufmann)
Sunset with the Swiss mountains in the background at Lake Thun (photo credit: Gallus Kaufmann)
Proteus mission setup (photo credit: Gallus Kaufmann)
Proteus returns from a mission to the Police boat and is received by Christian (photo credit: Gallus Kaufmann)
Proteus at full power (photo credit: Gallus Kaufmann)
Control station ready for a test (photo credit: Gallus Kaufmann)
Proteus finding lost ammunition at the bottom of the lake (photo credit: Tethys Robotics)
Swiss mountain view with Proteus in the lake (photo credit: Jonas Wüst)

World’s first

Learning about the different dangerous missions of professional divers, we came up with the idea of developing an underwater drone for rivers. River work involves high risks and can endanger lives. In future, this could change with the deployment of Osiris.

Osiris is our flow robot. It has not been deployed yet, but should face its first test at the end of 2021. It would be the world’s first underwater robot optimized for strong currents.
Team photo of the founder team in 2019 (photo credit: Bastian Schildknecht)

Future

In order to become a successful start-up, the next step for Tethys Robotics is to focus on developing more specific applications and finally create a product. For this, we need industrial partners and investors, which can be found at places like the KORMARINE conference. KORMARINE is an international marine, shipbuilding, offshore, oil and gas exhibition in South Korea where Tethys Robotics will be represented in collaboration with Switzerland Global Enterprise (S-GE).
Jonas and Pragash introducing visitors of the Innovation Park Zurich to our system (photo credit: Tethys Robotics)
Andrej and Jonas getting ready to deploy Proteus (photo credit: Gallus Kaufmann)
Jonas explaining the underwater system to visitors of the Startup Night Winterthur (photo credit: Johannes Lienhart)
Tethys Robotics performing at the MATE ROV competition 2019 (photo credit: Tethys Robotics)
Tethys Robotics has the vision to push the boundaries of underwater technology to reduce high risks and support the work of humans. Combatting high risks, we expect an equally high demand for our products.

Links

Tethys Robotics
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Tethys LinkedIn
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KORMARINE
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Photo credit: Gallus Kaufmann

About the author

Andrej Studer is Co-Founder of Tethys Robotics and currently Master Student in Robotics at the ETH Zurich.