Live video from an underwater robot

BB reader Ed McNichol emails from a research ship off the Oregon coast:

I'm currently at sea on the Research Vessel Thompson engaged in the Visions'11 expedition. We are working on the infrastructure for a cabled ocean observatory, part of the NSF Ocean Observatories Initiative.
We are streaming live HD video from the sea floor using the ROV ROPOS from the Canadian Scientific Submersible Facility. I thought you might be interested in giant robots and 900+km of fibre optic cable deploying a sensor network at an active submarine volcano.

Visions'11 Cruise

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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http://www.twitter.com/heycheri Sherilynn Macale

Best pitch line ever. “I thought you might be interested in giant robots and 900+km of fibre optic cable deploying a sensor network at an active submarine volcano.”

Why yes. Yes, I am interested.
Thank you for thinking of me.
- http://www.twitter.com/heycheri Sherilynn Macale
  
  PS. Keep me posted if something explodes.
brerrabbit23

Can your robot also play Guitar Hero?
- narddogz
  
  Heh, I saw that right away, too!
  
  Also, “Active Submarine Volcano” is a great name for a band.
- Chrs
  
  Clever idea, though, just mounting a color swatch into an unused part of the arm. You get both shadowed and unshadowed regions, lets you do color correction after the fact very nicely.
HenryPootel

Awesomeness of awesome! Squared!
HenryPootel

Operations coming up in a bit over an hour.
Mister44

Robots under water (two of my favorite things), almost make up for the monkeys in doll masks (stuff if nightmares).
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=716320262 Ed McNichol

Chrs -

The electrical tape is indeed used as a color reference. We also use a color chart from DSC Labs (“Splash”).

We can shade the camera from the ROV control room. It’s an Ikegami box camera with a Fujinon lens in an Insite Pacific housing. So we have a full camera control unit, Sony broadcast monitor, waveform and vectorscope to help us capture good content. And we can also color correct in post right here on the vessel.

-Ed
- Chrs
  
  Sounds like you’ve got it well covered!