Augmented reality comes to deep-sea divers, thanks to the US Navy's Office of Naval Research (ONR) and Coda Octopus's Divers Augmented Vision Display (DAVD) system. The setup turns any standard diving hard helmet into a digital information center.
If you've ever done any casual holiday scuba diving in places like the Bahamas, or watched undersea documentaries, it's easy to get the impression that being underwater is all clear water, white sand, and coral reefs populated by charming tropical fish.
However, as someone who has done a lot of work underwater, I can attest to the fact that it's usually much different and nowhere near as pleasant. It's so hard to work while diving, that tasks which take minutes topside need hours underwater. What's more, the sea has a nasty habit of being silty or muddy to the point where you can't see more than a few inches in front of you – the only warning that you've just scraped through a patch of fire coral is when the stinging cloud hits you in the face.
For deep-diving mixed-gas divers, it's far worse. Routinely diving below 130 ft (40 m), the divers are always in pitch darkness, relying on work and helmet lights, and they are tethered to the surface by complicated umbilical cords providing them with communications as well as feeding them a mixture of helium and oxygen. Because helium quickly carries away heat, warm water is also fed into the divers' suits, otherwise they would freeze to death.
Add in the aforementioned mud, silt, and a heavy dose of plankton, and it's no wonder that these divers command a very high pay grade.
To make the diver's life easier, ONR and Coda Octopus have come up with DAVD. Under development since 2016, DAVD is a step up from the video cameras that divers often carry. The problem with these cameras is that they send images to the supervisor on the surface, but not to the diver, leaving the supervisor with the unenviable task of describing to the diver what is right in front of him.
Worse, video cameras are very limited in what information they can convey. DAVD gets around that limitation with software that enhances both video and audio, cleaning them up while cancelling audio noise and allowing the supervisor to provide video with augmented reality annotations back to the diver. Readouts are provided by a pair of glasses mounted inside the helmet or on the helmet's faceplate.
However, DAVD's capabilities go well beyond that. It can provide the diver with readouts of depth, pressure, dive timers, gas reserve levels, compass headings, 3D sonar maps and 3D models, navigation instructions including waypoints, images, insert video feeds, and technical manuals.
According to ONR, there are currently about 15 variants of DAVD. The system has been used in a number of operations, including recovery efforts in the wake of the 2023 Maui wildfires, the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse, and inspection of the USS Arizona war memorial at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
Source: ONR
