英文原文
The Abyss Transit System
- James Cameron commissions the making of robots for a return to the
Titanic
By Gary Stix
At the beginning of the movie that made Leonardo DiCaprio a megastar, a camera-toting unmanned robot ventured into a cavernous hole in the wreck that sits on the bottom of the Atlantic, 12,640 feet from the surface. The 500-pound vehicle, christened Snoop Dog, could move only about 30 feet along a lower deck, hampered by its bulky two-inch-diameter tether hitched to a submarine that waited above. The amount of thrust needed to move its chunky frame stirred up a thick cloud. “The vehicle very quickly silted out the entire place and made imaging impossible,” director James Cameron recalls.
But the eerie vista revealed by Snoop Dog on that 1995 expedition made Cameron hunger for more. He vowed to return one day with technology that could negotiate anyplace within the Titanic's interior.
In the past six months two documentaries—one for IMAX movie theaters called Ghosts of the Abyss, the other, Expedition: Bismarck, for the DiscoveryChannel—demonstrated the fruits of a three-year effort that Cameron financed with $1.8 million of his own money to make this vision materialize. The payoff was two 70-pound robots, named after Blues Brothers Jake and Elwood, that had the full run of two of the world's most famous wrecks, the Titanic and the Bismarck, which they visited on separate expeditions.
The person who took Jake and Elwood from dream to robot is Mike Cameron, James's brother, an aerospace engineer who once designed missiles and who also possesses a diverse background as a helicopter pilot, stunt photographer and stuntman. (Remember the corpse in the movie The Abyss, from whose mouth a crab emerges?) Giving the remotely operated vehicles freedom of movement required that they be much smaller than Snoop Dog and that the tether's width be tapered dramatically so as not to catch on vertical ship beams.
Mike Cameron took inspiration from the wire-guided torpedoes used by the military that can travel for many miles. His team created vehicles operable to more than 20,000 feet (enough to reach as much as 85 percent of the ocean floor). The dimensions of the front of the robot are 16 inches high by 17 inches across, small enough to fit in a B deck window of the Titanic. The bots have an internal batter
y so that they do not need to be powered through    a tether. Instead the tether—fifty-thousandths of an inch in diameter—contains optical fibers that relay
control signals from a manned submersible vehicle hovering outside and that also send video images in the other direction. The tether pays out from the robot, a design that prevents it from snagging on objects in the wreck.
James Cameron thought the project would be a straightforward engineering task, not much harder than designing a new camera system. “This turned out to be a whole different order of magnitude,” he says. “There was no commercial off-the-shelf hardware that wo uld work in the vehicles. Everything had to be built from scratch.” If the team had known this early on, he added, “we wouldn't have bothered.” Water pressure on the cable that carried the optical fibers could create microscopic bends in the data pipe, completely cutting off the control signals from the submersibles. Dark Matter in Valencia, Calif. (Mike Cameron's company), had to devise a fluid-filled sheath around the fiber to displace the minuscule air pockets in the cable that could lead to the microbending.
To save weight, the frame—similar to a monocoque body of a race car—was made up of small glass hollow spheres contained in an epoxy matrix. The thruster contained a large-diameter, slowly rotating
blade with nozzles that diffused the propulsive flow, minimizing the churning that would otherwise disturb the caked silt.
A high-resolution video camera, along with an infrared camera for navigation, was placed in the front of the craft along with three light-emitting-diode arrays for fill lighting and two quartz halogen lamps for spotlighting.
The winter of 2001 marked a critical juncture. It was six months before dives to the Titanic could be safely attempted, and James had to determine whether to proceed or wait another year. “Mike was really, really negative on the idea, but I decided to go for it,” the director says. He felt he couldn't afford to wait longer and thought that a fixed deadline would focus the engineering staff at Dark Matter. Forhis part, Mike was contending with an unending series of design challenges. “It was such an overwhelming set of problems that I had very little confidence that certain parts would be solvable in the time we had,” Mike says.
A few weeks before the dives commenced in the summer of 2001, the robots' lithium sulfur dioxode-based batteries caught fire while being tested in a pressure tank, destroying what was to have been a third robot. Mike wanted to delay the dives, but James found a supplier of another type of lithium battery and pressed ahead.
At the dive site, Jake and Elwood took starring roles with their 2,000-foot tethers, exploring for the first time in about 90 years remote parts of the ships, including the engine room, the firemen's mess hall and the cabins of first-class passengers—even focusing in on a bowler hat, a brass headboard and an intact, upright glass decanter. The images lack the resolution and novel quality of the high-definition, three-dimensional IMAX images, the other major technological innovation of Ghosts
of the Abyss. Jake and Elwood's discoveries, however, draw the viewers' interest because of what they convey of the Titanic's mystique. “You actually feel like you're out there in the wreck,” Mike says. He remembers his brother piloting the robots with the helicopter stick that had been installed in the Russian submersible from which the robots were launched. “Jim ended up being a cowboy pilot,” Mike says. “He was far more aggressive with the system than I was.”
One scene in Ghosts of the Abyss reveals the tension that sometimes erupted between the brothers. James contemplates moving one of the robots through a cabin window that is still partially occluded by a shard of glass that could damage the vehicle or cut the data tether. When James declares that he is going to take Jake in, moviegoers can hear Mike pleading with his brother not to do it, ultimately relenting once the bot has negotiated the opening.
The decision to install a new type of battery at the last minute came to haunt the expedition; Elwood's lithium-polymer battery ignited while in the bowels of the ship. James manipulated the remaining robot into the Titanic to perform a rescue operation by hooking a cord to the grill of the dead bot and towing it out. At the surface—on the deck of the Russian scientific vessel the Keldysh, from which the two submarines carrying Jake and Elwood to the Titanic were launched—Mike rebuilt Elwood with a backup battery. During the next dive, the robot caught fire again while it was still mounted on the submarine, endangering the crew. Finally, Mike worked for an 18-hour stretch to adapt a lead-acid gel battery used for devices onboard the mother ship into a power source for Elwood, enabling the expedition to continue.
The bots, now fitted with a new, nonflammable battery that Mike designed, may find service beyond motion pictures. The U.S. Navy has funded Dark Matter to help it assess the technology for underwater recovery operations of ships or aircraft. The bots also have potential for scientific exploration of deep-sea trenches. After traveling to the Titanic and the Bismarck, the team went on to probe mid-Atlantic hydrothermal vents, discovering mollusks in a place where scientists had never encountered them before. As adventure aficionados, the brothers speculate that a descendant of Jake and Elwood might even be toted on a mission to Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, to investigate
the waters that are suspected to exist below its icy shell. The Cameron siblings, who tinkered with home-built rafts and rockets as children in Ontario near Niagara Falls, hope to be around long enough to witness their robotic twins go from the bottom of the ocean to the depths of space.
中文译文
穿越深渊的机器
--新型的机器人可在数百公尺深的水底残骸间自由穿梭游览
作者╱斯蒂克斯( Gary Stix )width的意思中文翻译
曾一举捧红超级巨星李奥纳多狄卡皮欧的电影「铁达尼号」中，片头是一台无人驾驶的遥控装置，携带着摄影机深入大西洋，在3852公尺深的铁达尼号残骸里冒险的画面。这台226.8公斤重的海底载具名为「嗅犬」（Snoop Dog），它被一条直径达五公分的笨重绳索所牵制，由于其中一端系在上面等待的潜水艇上，所以只能沿着底层甲板移动约九公尺。为了移动它矮胖的身躯，需要用到大量的推进力，但是却因此扬起厚重的尘云。导演詹姆斯．科麦隆（James Cameron）回忆道：“这台海底载具很快就使整个地方充满淤泥，所以根本不可能取得影像。”
但是，嗅犬在1995年这场探险所显示的迷人画面，却使科麦隆渴求得到更多发现。他发誓将来有一天
会重回铁达尼号，届时的技术将可以顺利穿越这艘船内部的任何地方。
为了实现这个梦想，科麦隆自己耗资180万美元。而就在过去六个月里，「深渊游魂」（Ghosts of the Abyss）和「俾斯麦号长征」（Expedi tion:Bismarck）这两支纪录片展示了他努力三年的成果；前者将于IMAX电影院上映，后者则于Discovery频道拨出。此次的成果是两台32公斤重的机器人，分别以电影「福禄双霸天」里的杰克（Jake）和埃尔伍德（Elwood）命名。在两次不同的探险里，它们已经可以完全自由地游览两艘举世闻名的沉船：铁达尼号及俾斯麦号。
把杰克和埃尔伍德从梦想化为实际的人是詹姆斯之弟麦克．科麦隆（Mike Cameron），他是航太工程师，曾设计飞弹，并且有各式各样的经历，如直升机驾驶员、特技镜头摄影师以及特技演员等（还记得电影「无底洞」里嘴里爬出螃蟹的死尸吗？）。为了要让远端操控的载具能够自由移动，其体积必须比嗅犬小很多，且绳索宽度需大幅变细，如此机器就不用紧抓垂直的船杆。
麦克．科麦隆的灵感来自于可以航行好几公里的军用导向。其团队所设计的海底载具，就算在超过6000公尺（足够到达海底85%的地方）的深处，还是可以操作。机器人正面的尺寸为高40公分宽43公分，已足够小，正适合进入铁达尼号B甲板的窗户，此外它还具有内部电池，因此不需经由绳索控制。而直径0.12公分的绳索包着光纤，驾驶潜水艇在外护航的操作人员，便可透过它传递控制讯号，也可以将录影的影像送回。绳索是由机器人这端放出，这样的设计是为了防止它被残骸里的物品绊住而影响行动。
詹姆斯．科麦隆原本以为这个计画是一项简单的工程，不会比设计一个新
的摄影系统更难。他说：「结果完全不是这样。商业现成的硬体根本不能用，一切都要从头做起。」他补充道：「如果团队在初期时就能够知道这点，我们绝对不会自麻烦。」携带光纤的缆线会因为水压的关系而在资料管里产生极小的弯曲，完全切断潜水艇的控制讯号。位于美国加州瓦伦西亚，由麦克．科麦隆成立的「暗物质公司」，设计了填满液体的护套围绕着光纤，取代了缆线里会导致微弯的小气囊。
为了减轻重量，主要骨架（类似赛车的单体结构）是由包裹在环氧化物里的小空心玻璃球体所组成。机器的推进器包含了大直径慢速转动的螺旋桨，而且推进水流由喷嘴送出，以避面剧烈搅动扰乱了结块的淤泥。一台高解析度摄影机放置在小船的前方，另外还有一台导航用红外线摄影机、三排发光二极体负责提供充足的照明，以及两个石英卤素灯用于聚光。
2001年冬天是一个关键时期。在有把握潜入铁达尼号之前，詹姆斯有六个月的时间决定是否继续进行或者再等一年。他说：「麦克非常反对这个计画，但我决定大胆一试。」他觉得他无法再等下去，而且固定的截止日期可以使暗物质公司的工程人员专注于此。对于麦克而言，他要处理设计上永无止境的挑战，他表示：「一连串的问题不断袭来，以至于我只有极小的信心能够在有限时间内解决掉部份问题。」
2001年夏天，在潜水开始进行之前的几星期，当机器人在压力箱进行测试的时候，内部的锂／二氧化硫电池不幸着火，摧毁了尚未成形的第三台机器人。麦克想要暂缓潜水的时间，但詹姆斯到供应商提供另一种型式的锂电池，坚持继续进行。
在潜水地点，带着610公尺绳索的杰克和埃尔伍德两兄弟是亮眼的角，它们得以在90年后第一次探索这艘远离尘嚣的沉船，包括引擎室、火伕餐厅和旅客的头等舱，甚至把焦点集中于一顶圆顶帽、一副黄铜床头架和一个完整无缺、笔直站立的玻璃酒瓶上。「深渊游魂」在技术上另一项主要的革新，是为这些影像提供了高解析度和高度清晰的神奇品质，也就是立体IMAX影像。然而，杰克和埃尔伍德的发现之所以引起观众兴趣，是因为它们传达了铁达尼号的神秘。麦克说：「你真的会觉得自己就身在残骸里。」他还记得在放出机器人的俄罗斯潜水艇上，他哥哥用其上装设的直升机控制杆操控这些机器人的情景。麦克说：「詹姆斯最后成为娴熟大胆的驾驶员，他对此系统比我还要有干劲。」「深渊游魂」里有一幕显出两兄弟间偶尔迸发的紧张气氛。詹姆斯打算让其中一台机器人穿过客舱窗户，但这个窗户仍有尖锐的玻璃碎片阻碍，可能会损害工具或者切断资料绳。当詹姆斯宣布要让杰克进入时，看电影的人可以听到麦克恳求他哥哥不要这么做，最后因为机器安全通过洞口，气氛才缓和下来。
在最后一刻安装新型电池的决定为探险队带来麻烦；埃尔伍德的锂聚合物电池在船内著火了。詹姆斯操作余下的机器人到铁达尼号内部展开救援行动，利用绳索钩住已废机器人的机架，然后把它拖出来。
在海面上（俄罗斯科学研究船舰凯帝旭号的甲板上，负责运送杰克和埃尔伍德至铁达尼的两台潜水艇就

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