The Exosuit in testing
A new underwater diving suit – known as the Exosuit – will soon embark on a mission to go to the deepest depths of the ocean to retrieve and bring back new information on the world’s oldest computer.
Lying approximately 120m below sea level, the Antikythera wreck off the coast of Greece was the sight of one of the most incredible archaeological discoveries of the last century with the retrieval of the Antikythera mechanism, considered the world’s first computer dated to the first century BC.
Until now, existing diving suits were not able to cope with the pressure exerted on it by the volume of water and, in fact, led to a number of cases of decompression sickness and even death.
Now, the futuristic-looking Exosuit will allow the diver to stay underwater at these levels of depth more than was capable with existing atmospheric diving suits (ADS).
Designed by Nuytco, the aluminium-crafted Exosuit comes after years of development on its previous incarnation – the Newtsuit – with the latest model weighing considerably less, to the tune of 159kg.
While the amount of time a diver can spend in the suit has been reduced from 56 hours to 50 as well as a slower thruster speed of 1.6HP, the Exosuit features far more advanced communications systems along with being able to use a gigabit Ethernet cable over fibre optic which will allow the diver to send back high-definition video footage of the Greek wreck and the further potential treasures that may be hidden within it.
