The ice stuff

There is no visible horizon in the waters beneath the Ross Ice Shelf. So electrical engineer Jim O???Sullivan built an artificial one for the pilot of the submersible remotely operated vehicle (ROV) that he and a team of scientists were testing there in 2008. The team didn???t lack for data: The ROV´s orientation, speed, and depth were numerically displayed on the pilot???s screen. But it is difficult to convert numbers into spatial awareness. The ROV was at risk of crashing into the delicate creatures, such as sea spiders, that it was supposed to be observing.