Story highlights Humanoid dive-bot "OceanOne" successfully completes its maiden voyage

The mermaid-like robot can go deeper and stay under longer than regular divers

(CNN) Drifting down into the gloomy depths, the diver barely paused before entering a wreck that lay undisturbed for three and a half centuries.

The underwater traveler maneuvered slowly but determinedly, honed in on an ancient artifact, gently picked it up and deposited it in a sample bag.

The recovery of a small vase from the wreck of La Lune, once Louis XIV's flagship, marked a significant step in man's discovery of the oceans.

The diver in question, a plucky orange-and-white humanoid robot called OceanOne, had successfully completed its maiden voyage. It navigated the wreck that lay out of reach of conventional divers since sinking in waters 32 km (20 miles) off the French city of Toulon in November 1664, taking with it a thousand souls.

Aboard a surface support vessel, Oussama Khatib, a Stanford computer science professor, exchanged gleeful high-fives with his students, the Stanford News reports

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