We are excited today to release our latest operations for the Eureka Collection System.

Since first conceptualizing a selective collection system in 2021 and releasing our first animation in 2022, we have continually innovated and made real the concepts that we have demonstrated. Our first animation focused on communicating the key novel technologies of the delta arm for selective collection and the buoyancy engines for offsetting the mass collected and moving up and down through the water. In the years that followed we proved these technologies first with our Eureka I shallow water proof of concept and then with Eureka II, deploying this to deep water off the coast of Florida in 2024.

As with any initial concept, some of the secondary aspects of the concept were not the focus in the initial animation. In the second animation, released in 2023, we focused on all aspects of the subsea vehicle operation, including how we were pulling the nodules from the end effectors up into the AUV. This is the solution that we had implemented successfully with Eureka I and continued with on Eureka II. In the second animation there was less focus on the surface operations as our focus has always been to solve the hardest parts of the problem first.

With this release of our third version of our concept of operations we have continued to refine the surface operations, providing substantial detail about how the AUVs will be captured, secured at the ship and serviced when on deck. We are well underway in the development of the smart hook capture system and have recently demonstrated our first autonomous docking between Eureka II and the smart hook prototype system.

We have always spoken about the ability to efficiently capture and turn around these autonomous vehicles when at the surface and enable our system to operate in high sea states. This video provides some good clarity for how we will be doing this, with the full solution being automated, we are capturing the Eureka vehicles and through automation performing the necessary battery swap, nodule offload and other maintenance needs. All of these innovations have been protected with patent applications.

In earlier versions of the animations there has always been aspects of the overall solution being done with magic, whether it was the nodules magically disappearing from the claws and getting into the hopper from our first animation to the battery magically flying through the air to be replaced in the second animation.

We are happy that this latest video leaves little to imagination, but we still think that it is pretty magical.