Abstract

Recent advances in robotic design, autonomy and sensor integration create solutions for the exploration of
deep-sea environments, transferable to the oceans of icy moons. Marine platforms do not yet have the mission
autonomy capacity of their space counterparts (e.g., the state of the art Mars Perseverance rover mission),
although different levels of autonomous navigation and mapping, as well as sampling, are an extant capability.
In this setting their increasingly biomimicked designs may allow access to complex environmental scenarios,
with novel, highly-integrated life-detecting, oceanographic and geochemical sensor packages. Here, we lay an
outlook for the upcoming advances in deep-sea robotics through synergies with space technologies within
three major research areas: biomimetic structure and propulsion (including power storage and generation),
artificial intelligence and cooperative networks, and life-detecting instrument design. New morphological and
material designs, with miniaturized and more diffuse sensor packages, will advance robotic sensing systems.
Artificial intelligence algorithms controlling navigation and communications will allow the further
development of the behavioral biomimicking by cooperating networks. Solutions will have to be tested
within infrastructural networks of cabled observatories, neutrino telescopes, and off-shore industry sites
with agendas and modalities that are beyond the scope of our work, but could draw inspiration on the
proposed examples for the operational combination of fixed and mobile platforms.