The Memorial University of Newfoundland lost a two-meter long, yellow robot in the Atlantic Ocean on Sunday.
CBC News reports that the Autonomous Ocean Systems Laboratory with the university says that they lost contact with the unmanned vehicle in Conception Bay on Sunday, and have said that the torpedo-like vehicle is not dangerous.
The vehicle, which is worth $200,000, is also known as a glider.
"It's been out for eight or nine days collecting very important data for research projects that we are doing here at the lab. This was something that was planned for quite a long time and the loss of data will be a setback for some of the research we are doing here, particularly for PhD students," said project manager Neil Riggs.
Researchers at the university are trying to determine if robots can be navigated underwater using the earth's geomagnetic field.
"It's very difficult to navigate robots using an awful lot of expensive infrastructure. So we thought that if we could use something that is already there, like the earth's magnetic field, we may be able to do it way more inexpensively and perhaps just as effectively," Riggs said.
Since 2006, the university has lost three other robots.
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