URBANA, Ill. (WCIA) — A U.S. Navy and Air Force-funded project at the University of Illinois could have implications for the current situation in the Strait of Hormuz.
Despite a ceasefire being struck earlier this week, not many ships are going in and out of the crucial waterway. As American officials try to re-open the strait, reports of Iranian sea mines are still a major cause for concern.
More than a decade ago, on a different continent, U of I electrical engineering professor Viktor Gruev invented a polarization camera that could be used to track those obstacles down.
“I built this camera, it was my first project as a professor,” he said.
From there, Gruev quickly heard from marine biologists about the applications of his camera, given the tricky nature of underwater navigation.
The invention’s first test?
“Can I drop a camera, with a machine learning algorithm embedded, and can I tell you this camera’s location,” Gruev said.
In the last decade plus, his cameras have collected data along coastlines all over the world; from his home country North Macedonia, to Champaign, to Hawaii and the Great Barrier Reef.
The camera — polarized just like your Ray Bans lenses — have even been used to film Netflix nature documentaries.
“They used our cameras with David Attenborough on ‘Life in Color,'” Gruev said.
But, ten years ago Gruev pitched a different idea to the U.S. Navy and Air Force.
“Detecting mines was actually one of the applications we were thinking back then,” he said.
Now, with mines believed to be in the Strait of Hormuz, Gruev said his camera could be applied to find those obstacles.
“Cameras mounted to underwater drones, that can move freely underwater and find something interesting and potentially dangerous,” Gruev said. “If you want to put very expensive ships that are going to be moving in a given area, you want to have the security or knowledge; either remove [the mines] beforehand or have no-go zones.”
The Strait’s warm waters and soil composition present some difficult challenges, according to the professor.
“Some of these objects can kind of sink in some of those lower waters,” he said. “The sediments again can go undetected.”
But his remote controlled technology helps answer the following question.
“How do we find them in a way that doesn’t jeopardize lives?” Gruev said.
Whether or not this technology is already being used is classified, Gruev said. Still, he said he’s researching how to make it more accurate at even deeper levels of the ocean.