Winners Announced in $7M Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE for Advancements in Autonomous Ocean Exploration
Today, XPRIZE,
the global leader in designing and operating incentive competitions to solve humanity’s grand challenges, has announced winners in the $7M Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE, a global competition to advance ocean technologies for rapid, unmanned and high-resolution ocean exploration and discovery.
The results
were revealed at an awards ceremony hosted at the world-renowned Oceanographic Museum of Monaco, part of the Oceanographic Institute, Prince Albert I of Monaco Foundation.
The grand prize winner,
receiving a total of $4M, was GEBCO-NF Alumni, an international team based in the United States,
while KUROSHIO, from Japan, claimed $1M as the runner-up:
GEBCO-NF (International)
Led by Rochelle Wigley, Ph.D.
Yulia Zarayskaya, Ph.D.,
the 14-nation team
integrated existing technologies and ocean-mapping experience with a robust and low-cost unmanned surface vessel, the SeaKIT, along with a novel cloud-based data processing system that allows for rapid seabed visualization, to contribute towards comprehensive mapping of the ocean floor by 2030.
KUROSHIO (Yokosuka, Japan)
Led by Takeshi Nakatani, Ph.D.,
the team integrated technologies from their partners to create a surface vessel and software platform that can operate with different autonomous underwater vessels, which increases the versatility of their technology.
The $1M National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Bonus Prize
for teams to develop technology that could detect a chemical or biological signal underwater and autonomously track it to its source
XPRIZE
https://www.xprize.org/articles/ocean-discovery-winners-announced