Ulysses’ Mako AUV and Fujitsu’s “Ocean Digital Twin” Are Exactly the Direction Underwater Drones Need

If you’ve ever wondered about what the the deepest point in the ocean actually looks like, a new AUV (Autonomous Underwater Vehicle) by Fujitsu may hold the answer.

We have a ton of quadcopters on the consumer side, plus a (somewhat) healthy pipeline of professional and enterprise systems. Meanwhile, the underwater world still feels like a niche club. Expensive AUVs, specialized operators, limited scale, and not many “normal” options that make people say: “Yeah, I could actually put this to work.”

That’s why the Ulysses Mako AUV is so interesting. It’s being shown in the context of real-world work and ocean mapping.

The Mako is being used alongside Fujitsu’s proprietary AI-enabled mapping module to build a high-resolution “ocean digital twin” for ecosystems like coral reefs and seagrass beds.

Underwater Drones, But With the Same Mindset that Made Quadcopters Popular

Mapping the sea floor is becoming a practical way to estimate how much CO2 coastal ecosystems absorb and store. Bloomberg’s article on the partnership even shows the Ulysses Mako AUV being used for seagrass restoration in Perth, Australia.

That’s the key shift. When the work is repeatable and measurable, the market starts demanding more robots, not more boats and divers.

If progress continues to accelerate at the pace it has been, I foresee AUVs becoming far more popular in civilian and military work alike within the next five years.

On Ulysses’ side, the Mako is a modular AUV meant for long-duration missions, with the company advertising specs like endurance (listed at 72 hours on its main page), a max payload of around 200 Lbs., and a 5,000 ft depth rating.

Additionally, the Mako can be equipped with harvesting, planting, scanning, monitoring payloads, or anything else that helps with seagrass restoration.

The main goal of the Mako is to be modular, scalable, and easily deployable; and if what the company states is accurate, this AUV may check every box that would allow it to monopolize the market.

What is “Blue Carbon?”

“Blue carbon” is the carbon captured and stored by coastal and marine ecosystems, especially mangroves, salt marshes, and seagrass meadows.

These habitats pull CO2 from the atmosphere through photosynthesis, then lock a lot of that carbon away not just in the plants, but in the mud and sediments underneath them, where it can stick around for a long time if the habitat stays intact.

The catch is that “blue carbon” only matters in the real world if you can measure it and verify it. That’s where the Mako starts to shine – if you can repeatedly map seagrass coverage, density, and changes over time, you can back up claims like “this restoration worked” or “this area is storing more carbon than last year” using visual data you can see change over time.

Fujitsu’s Angle: Underwater LiDAR + AI That Can Actually See in Low-Visibility Environments

Fujitsu’s press release is worth reading because it gets specific about the details behind their

They’re describing a stack that combines:

• Underwater LiDAR plus real-time 3D measurement from a moving AUV
• Image enhancement AI that corrects color distortion and clarifies contours in murky water so you can identify and measure targets with centimeter-level accuracy

Fujitsu also claims its underwater LiDAR approach can select a suitable wavelength from three laser wavelengths depending on sea conditions, and that it verified the tech in a field trial near Ishigaki Island (Okinawa) in January 2024, successfully collecting 3D data for coral reef mapping.

The “ocean digital twin” uses AUVs and satellites to collect ecosystem and infrastructure data, then modeling and simulating changes over time. In the future, they plan to expand to target seaweed beds for stored carbon and conservation planning.

DroneXL’s Take

This thing is pretty sweet, and it highlights a gap the drone world should be talking about more.

On the aerial side, you can pick from a hundred quadcopters that all basically do the job. Underwater, it still feels like you either spend serious money, or you don’t play ball.

We need more underwater drones and ROVs on the market, period. Not just for universities or oil and gas, but for conservation groups, ports, local governments, offshore wind sites, researchers, and eventually the broader professional/consumer crowd.

If Fujitsu is building the “eyes” (underwater LiDAR + AI cleanup that makes data usable) and companies like Ulysses are pushing modular, scalable platforms, that’s how this space stops being niche. I think this AUV is an amazing step in the right direction, and I’ll be following it in the coming months and years to see what payloads are developed for this unique platform.