The engineers and designers at Geneinno have been working on underwater vehicles since 2013, with the Trident 'underwater scooter' and Poseidon 'small drone' introduced in the past two years. The group is back with Titan, a deep diving underwater drone they hope will make underwater exploration easy and accessible.
Geneinno is touting the Titan as 'the deepest diving underwater drone for everyone' and highlighting the fact that the unit can dive to depths of 150 meters. The other design enhancement is the 4k 30 frame per second camera, coupled with an app that gives users control of the system and 1080p real-time streaming. The controller is a standard gaming shell with joysticks and buttons that houses your phone that can run the GeneROV app. Purple and red camera filters, 3000 lumen lights for diving in dark water, and 160 degree wide angle field of view lenses are additional enhancements for the photo and video system. An 8 pin port on the underside of the drone is built for future expansions that might include sonar, a robotic arm, or an underwater microphone. It's not clear if the company will develop accessories on their own or allow users to bring their own enhancements.
Two horizontal and four vertical thrusters work together to give up to 2 meters per second speed in still water. The footprint of the drone is 390 x 347 x 165 millimeters and weighs 4.4 kilograms. The 10.8 Volt, 9000 milliAmp hour battery is expected to run for four hours and requires two hours to charge. A 4.2 millimeter diameter tether cable is 50 meters long (one option is a 150 meter long cable) with a wireless range of 50 meters. The GeneROV app is compatible with Android 5.0 or later, and iOS 10.0 or later.
The Titan campaign is flashy and well polished but short on technical details. There are several videos of prototypes being tested and run but it will be interesting to watch in the next year and see how the project progresses. A fast google search found other underwater drones boasting depths of 150 meters, so this might be a new standard that ROV makers try to hit. The Titan campaign is already successful, with several backers onboard for drone packages between $1,199 and $5,599. Campaign ends on July 20 and estimated shipping date is October 2018.