Published on June 19, 2025
–
Updated on June 19, 2025
Dates
on the June 18, 2025
On land, measuring your speed and position is easy! In the car, all you need is an odometer. On a bike, you can calculate your speed using your wheel. But underwater, it's a different story: no GPS, expensive sensors, vision limited to a few meters in the water...
EyeNav Robotics
EyeNav Robotics, a French start-up founded with Tarek Hamel, a researcher at the Sophia Antipolis Computer Science, Signals and Systems Laboratory (I3S) in December 2023.The aim? To make underwater drones more accurate and robust, using a novel combination of visual sensors and inertial navigation systems that provide an object's orientation in space. Unlike aerial drones, which can see for kilometers, an underwater robot can only see for fifteen meters at best.
A unique underwater challenge
It all began when researchers at the Sophia Antipolis Computer Science, Signals and Systems Laboratory (I3S) developed "Observer Theory", a mathematicalframework that led to groundbreaking results in improving inertial sensors, which measure acceleration and rotation to estimate an object's motion. Until now, these units have suffered from a major problem: drift. The longer an underwater robot uses them, the more it loses precision and orientation. After seeing the value of these advances, several companies approached the researchers to exploit the results. They then decided to create their own start-up: EyeNav Robotics.The improved inertial unit with the mathematical model was added to the underwater robot. What's more, they equipped it with an artificial vision system that captures images underwater.
In fact, even improved inertial units can still make errors. These have to be compensated for by analyzing images captured underwater.
The start-up didn't stop there: the researchers also added sonar. Think of sonar as an ultrasound that lets you "see" further out, where cameras reach their limits. It's a bit like giving the robot an inner ear (inertial unit), a single eye (camera) and remote "super-vision" (sonar).
Why is this important?
Underwater robots can then inspect subsea infrastructures such as pipelines, fiber optic cables and offshore wind turbines... Today, these tasks require expensive divers and crews, with heavy and complex interventions. An autonomous robot could carry out these missions continuously and cost-effectively. With EyeNav Robotics, robots can stabilize themselves, or map their environment with precision. A game-changing advance for underwater exploration and maintenance.In terms of safety, EyeNav Robotics technologies can also detect underwater mines, intercept hostile vehicles or monitor sensitive areas.
Continuous innovation and adaptability will be the keys to EyeNav Robotics' expansion.
A promising future
Today, EyeNav Robotics is making great strides. The company is developing "technological bricks" that can be adapted to different needs. The stakes are clear: develop low-cost, robust and precise solutions to revolutionize underwater navigation. While the company is currently focusing on underwater drones, its expertise could extend far beyond this. The same principle applies to the air, with solutions adapted to drones and helicopters, notably for precise docking on a ship in maritime motion.By combining advanced mathematics, artificial intelligence and robotics, EyeNav Robotics is positioning itself as a key player in autonomous navigation - a major technological challenge, but a promise for the future.
