Seven years ago, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution built a new class of underwater vehicle, called Orpheus, to study the darkest recesses of the ocean. Private investors took notice. And now, the Orpheus is going commercial — looking to make a splash in industries working offshore.
The bright-orange Orpheus looks like a plump little submarine with legs.
It’s about five-and-a-half feet long and stands on a thin metal frame designed to land on the bottom of the ocean — at the deepest parts, about 11,000 meters down.
That makes it different from most autonomous underwater vehicles, or AUVs.
In January, CAI got a firsthand look at the Orpheus in a workshop at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
The plastic outer shell is deceptively simple; it’s not even water tight. Inside, the important stuff — like electronics and cameras — goes in a 17-inch sphere.
“That high-pressure-capable sphere is the brains,” says Justin Ossolinski, director of AVAST, a Woods Hole initiative focused on ocean technology. “That is the valuable part of that vehicle. … And that sphere is made out of really thick glass. So, it has to withstand 11,000 meters pressure, so it really, really has to be strong.”
The Orpheus can be reconfigured for various missions by installing different instrumentation. That’s the case with almost every vehicle built at WHOI, he says, “because they are basically driven by scientific objectives.”
Of course, technology developed for science can be put to commercial uses, too.
That’s what’s happening with Orpheus. It’s been licensed to industry.
Entrepreneur Jake Russell and engineer Casey Machado, one of the original designers of the Orpheus, co-founded Orpheus Ocean.
To see where their new fleet of vehicles will be built, we go to New Bedford.
Russell is walking through the space they’ve leased at the nonprofit New Bedford Research and Robotics.
“This is our area here,” he says, showing off the high-ceilinged industrial space. It has workbenches and access to a huge overhead gantry crane to lift the 500-pound vehicle.
“We don’t have a robot yet to show,” he says. “We’ve just been building some of the electronics and circuit boards that go inside it.”
That was back in December, and things have moved quickly. The company has since finished its first in-house-built Orpheus AUV.
Russell says his vision is to build a fleet of relatively inexpensive Orpheus-class vehicles to survey the bottom of the ocean for offshore wind and other industries. Supporting the laying of undersea cables is one area of opportunity, not only for offshore wind, but also for fiber optic communications.
“Companies like Google and Meta are building their own internet connections under the ocean, which cross hundreds and hundreds of miles and require their own kind of environmental surveys as well,” he says.
Russell hopes to keep the cost per vehicle below $200,000 — which he says is about one-tenth the price of equipment doing this kind of work today.
For offshore wind, the Orpheus could survey the ocean floor as U.S. wind farms move into deeper waters.
Russell concedes that President Trump’s order blocking permitting of offshore wind is bad for his company. But even before the Trump order, he was planning to get a foothold in the deep-sea field by working with researchers first.
“You have to demonstrate that you’re reliable, that you can deliver what you say you’re going to deliver,” he says. “Because I think the risk appetite in the commercial sector is much, much lower than in the academic sector.”
Orpheus Ocean has signed a partnership agreement with Seabed 2030, a project to create a digital map of the world’s ocean floor.
“It’s been just super exciting so far,” Russell says. “I honestly didn’t see myself in this position even two or three years ago.”
The new Orpheus will deploy for its first mission, near Guam, in May, to collect seafloor photos and videos and sample the sediment.
A technology born and nurtured in Woods Hole and brought to market in New Bedford is ready to make its mark on what’s becoming an industrial frontier.
Copyright 2025 CAI
