Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey’s startup Anduril has so far focused on above-ground drones and virtual border walls, but now it’s ready to go below the waves. The company has bought Dive Technologies, a startup focusing on autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs).
Luckey’s firm is already offering Dive’s existing DIVE-LD AUV as an option. The customizable drone can handle not only military tasks like anti-submarine warfare and undersea combat zone awareness, but peaceful duties like mapping seabeds and oceanographic sensing. This could be as useful for NOAA and commercial ventures as it might be for the Navy, in other words. Anduril plans to integrate its Lattice OS autonomy software into the “next iteration” of DIVE-LD.
Part of the allure is the manufacturing process. Dive builds the DIVE-LD using a combination of large-scale 3D printing (Large Format Additive Manufacturing) and…
