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Robots and AI instead of intuition and luck. I’m talking about searching for underwater treasures and the proposal of the Ecuadorian businessmen. They have come up with the idea to create a drone fleet that will be able to find sunken ships. The underwater machine army will be working autonomously scanning the sea floor meter by meter, where countless riches are hidden. UNESCO estimates that there are traces of 3,000,000 shipwrecks lying in the ocean. Hundreds of thousands of these ships could be loaded with treasure chests which are rumored to cost trillions of dollars. The most expensive cargo — the treasures of the Spanish king — was discovered a couple of years ago. Gold and emeralds from the Caribbean were worth $15 billion. The drone fleet could be sold at a profit. Authors of the start-up promise to create a ship map as a result of their research and auction their coordinates. The data could be bought only with cryptocurrency. A question arises: Why share such valuable data when they could use it themselves?
The drones are equipped with the traditional hardware. Their length is about 2 meters and the maximum depth is about 600. Their sonar hydrolocators are also pretty standard. However, some aspects are rather odd. It’s been listed that they can work autonomously for half a year. Compare that to an American analog: according to its technical dossier, its operating period is only 70 hours. Both Ecuadorian and American prototypes have electric motors and large lithium-ion batteries. What makes them so different then?
By the way, thanks to the American drones the shipwreck site of the Spanish galleon San José was discovered that had been carrying gold along the shores of Colombia. It sunk in the Caribbean. The sea and the Mexican Gulf were prioritized by the authors of the project.
However, the Ecuadorian treasure hunters plan to scan the bottom of the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans along the historic trade routes between the Old and the New Worlds. Another question arises: How will other countries treat the mini-submarines at their shores?
The project isn’t purely Ecuadorian. It becomes clear when you see the list of the authors. It was founded by Alejandro Gavrilyuk. 15-year IT experience and the fact that he founded a special company. It appears that Gavrilyuk’s Ecuadorian team is not going to share information with treasure hunters. They preserve the right to examine the most promising locations and plan to surface one or two ships per year.