ALEXANDRIA, Va., Aug. 12 -- United States Patent no. 12,704,065, issued on Aug. 11, was assigned to Impossible Metals Inc. (San Jose, Calif.).
"Apparatus for retrieving deep-sea nodules" was invented by Oliver Gunasekara (San Jose, Calif.) and Jason Gillham (San Jose, Calif.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A deep-sea mining apparatus for retrieving deep-sea nodules is provided. The deep-sea mining apparatus includes a buoyancy system, a payload hopper, an underwater autonomous vehicle (UAV), and a collector system. The collector system includes a controller system and a perception system communicatively coupled to the controller system and configured to track the deep-sea mining system as the ...