Unlocking the seabed
It is our mission to help allied nations, marine professionals, and scientific communities with exceptional clarity and access to seabed data. Driven by our truly autonomous ocean exploration technology.
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We believe the key to unlocking the seabed are autonomous robots with great sensing capabilities which must be low-cost, easy to manufacture, and easy to use, to have widespread adoption and deliver impact.​​​ Going forward, we are going to continue to enhance our optical seabed mapping technology and combine it with acoustic sensing driven by the same autonomy.
Founded out of curiosity
The journey of Lobster Robotics began during our university days, where the founders met while working on an engineering project to design a camera for the TU Delft Lunar Zebro moon rover. Despite our enthusiasm and hard work, we quickly realized the immense difficulty of getting to the moon, the launch was postponed multiple times. This led us to ask: what is the most challenging environment on planet Earth? Our conclusion: exploring the deep sea. To explore the ocean's depths, you must contend with immense pressure, very limited communication, and vast unexplored territories. However, reaching these depths is as simple as throwing a rock overboard at the right place and letting gravity do the rest. What started as a student project driven by curiosity led to the founding of Lobster Robotics in 2021.
Introduction of the Lobster Scout
In early 2023, we launched the first version of Lobster Scout, a fully integrated optical seabed mapping robot combining full maneuverability, high-quality optics and lights, and smart software.
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Instead of watching hours of video footage, this milestone allows us to provide an interactive visual map of the seabed. The ability to obtain sub-millimeter resolution over hectares of scale, is truly an advancement in ocean exploration. Exactly this ability is what us got selected to participate in NATO's DIANA accelerator to further develop our seabed mapping technology for usage in the alliance.
Autonomy that is reliable and easy to operate
We believe in that ocean data must be easy to collect. We look at every stage of the process and simplify wherever possible, from production to deployment and from recovery to data sharing. We have knowledge and influence over most of the parts and processes so we can automate repetitive processes. We believe that this vertical integration is key to make underwater robots reliable and easy to manufacture, easy to maintain and easy to use.
Maritime work is inherently dangerous. Our survival instincts prevail over our ambition. If a task can’t be done safely, we don’t do it.
Safety
We strive to develop the most effective technical solutions by relying on first-principle thinking rather than following widely adopted methods.
Ingenuity
We do what we say and we say what we do. It keeps things simple and easy to work with. This also applies to our value proposition: by providing clear data, we enable our customers to make decisions confidently.
Clarity
By building tech for exploration, we satisfy our innate curiosity and desire to discover new things, pushing the boundaries of our knowledge as humankind.
Curiosity
Our Culture (SICC)
Our Team
Stephan Rutten
CEO
Joris Quist
Lead Software Developer
Wiktor Tomanek
Electronics Designer
Daan de Groot
CTO
Arthur Admiraal
Lead Electronics Design
Christy Dubbelman
Office Manager
Danny Looman
CFO
Jochem Hoorneman
Software Developer
Bas van Vliet
Lead Operations
