New $7 Million XPRIZE Competition Seeks to Usher in a New Era of Ocean Exploration
Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE to Accelerate Technology Breakthroughs
for Rapid and Unmanned Ocean Exploration
At a keynote address today during the American Geophysical Union Fall
Meeting in San Francisco, Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, chairman and CEO of XPRIZE,
announced the launch of the $7M
Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE, a three-year global competition
challenging teams to advance ocean technologies for rapid and unmanned
ocean exploration. As part of the total $7M prize purse, the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is offering a $1M bonus
prize to teams that demonstrate their technology can “sniff out” a
specified object in the ocean through biological and chemical signals.
David Schewitz, Shell vice president of geophysics for the Americas, and
Richard Spinrad, chief scientist at NOAA, joined Diamandis on stage to
launch the new competition.
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“Our oceans cover two-thirds of our planet’s surface and are a crucial
global source of food, energy, economic security, and even the air we
breathe, yet 95 percent of the deep sea remains a mystery to us,”
Diamandis said. “In fact, we have better maps of the surface of Mars
than we do of our own seafloor. The Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE will
address a critical ocean challenge by accelerating innovation to further
explore one of our greatest unexplored frontiers.”
The three-year competition includes nine months for team registration,
12 months for initial solution development and 18 months to complete two
rounds of testing and judging by an expert panel. In each round, teams
will complete a series of tasks, including making a bathymetric map (a
map of the sea floor), producing high-resolution images of a specific
object, and identifying archeological, biological or geological
features. Teams also must show resiliency and durability by proving they
can operate their technologies, deployed from the shore or air, at a
depth of up to 4,000 meters.
“Spurring innovation and creating radical breakthroughs in ocean
discovery are what excite us about collaborating with XPRIZE,” Schewitz
said. “Shell recognizes the need to leverage the full power of
innovation: the capacity for doing things differently and better than
before.”
A $4M Grand Prize and $1M Second Place Prize will be awarded to the two
teams that receive the top scores for demonstrating the highest
resolution seafloor mapping, after meeting all minimum requirements for
speed, autonomy and depth. Up to 10 teams that proceed to Round 2 will
split a $1M milestone prize purse. And the $1M NOAA bonus prize will be
awarded to the team that can trace a chemical or biological signal to
its source.
“The goal of the $1M NOAA bonus prize is to identify technology that can
aid in detecting sources of pollution, enable rapid response to leaks
and spills, identify hydrothermal vents and methane seeps, as well as
track marine life for scientific research and conservation efforts,”
said Spinrad.
The Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE is part of the 10-year XPRIZE Ocean
Initiative – a commitment made to launch five multi-million dollar
prizes by 2020 to address critical ocean challenges and make the oceans
healthy, valued and understood. XPRIZE awarded the Wendy Schmidt Oil
Cleanup XCHALLENGE in 2011 and the Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health XPRIZE in
July 2015.
For more information, and to register your intent to compete, visit oceandiscovery.xprize.org.
To watch the live AGU keynote webcast at 12:30 p.m. PST, tune-in to AGU’s
live stream here.
View
or download
an overview video of the Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE.
About XPRIZE
Founded in 1995, XPRIZE is the leading organization solving the world’s
Grand Challenges by creating and managing large-scale, high-profile,
incentivized prizes in five areas: Learning; Exploration; Energy &
Environment; Global Development; and Life Sciences. Active prizes
include the $30M Google Lunar XPRIZE, the $20M NRG Cosia Carbon XPRIZE,
the $15M Global Learning XPRIZE, the $10M Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE, and
the $7M Adult Literacy XPRIZE. For more information, visit www.xprize.org.
About Royal Dutch Shell
Shell has been a technology pioneer for more than 100 years, and has
come up with many industry-transforming “firsts” to deliver energy its
customers and partners need. Since 2007, Shell has spent more than $1
billion annually on research and development. In 2014, our research and
development expenditures were $1.2 billion. Shell’s technical and
engineering staff amount to more than 43,000.
Shell companies have operations in more than 70 countries and
territories with businesses including oil and gas exploration and
production; production and marketing of liquefied natural gas and gas to
liquids; manufacturing, marketing and shipping of oil products and
chemicals and renewable energy projects. Royal Dutch Shell plc is
incorporated in England and Wales, has its headquarters in The Hague and
is listed on the London, Amsterdam, and New York stock exchanges. For
further information, visit www.shell.com.
About National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is a
science-based federal agency within the Department of Commerce with
regulatory, operational and information service responsibilities with a
presence in every state and U.S. territories. NOAA's mission is to
understand and predict changes in the Earth's environment, from the
depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and to conserve and
manage coastal and marine resources. For more information, visit www.noaa.gov.
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