DeepWater Exploration Inc.
San Diego maker of exploreHD, stellarHD and explore3D USB subsea cameras with Aquagon optics, rated to 11,000 m, for ROVs, AUVs and USVs.
DeepWater Exploration Inc. (DWE) is a San Diego company that designs underwater cameras, lighting, vision computers and software for marine robots. Its office is at 6215 Ferris Square in San Diego, California. The company says its products are designed, assembled and supported in the USA and that it engineers everything from the circuit boards and housings to its patented lens, in-house. LinkedIn gives a founding year of 2022 and a staff of 2-10 people, though DWE's online store has listed its first exploreHD camera since mid-2021. The company has announced an expansion into a new facility.
DWE's core idea is to make subsea cameras plug-and-play. Its cameras use USB 2.0 and are UVC-compliant, so they work as standard webcams on single-board computers such as the Raspberry Pi or NVIDIA Jetson, with no analogue frame grabbers or Ethernet camera electronics in between. Prices start at USD 300.
The products fall into two families. The General Vision Line is built around exploreHD, a compact 1.2 W HD camera with a Sony sensor, onboard H.264 compression, an IP69K rating, an anodised 6061-T6 aluminium housing and a quartz front element. The base model is rated to 400 m, and up to seven units can stream at once from one single-board computer. Heavier versions cover 600 or 1,000 m (exploreHD Heavy), 6,000 m (exploreHD Pro) and 11,000 m (exploreHD Challenger). The Machine Vision Line is built around stellarHD, a 2 MP global-shutter camera that runs at 60 frames per second. DWE's PrecisionSync one-wire hardware frame synchronisation lets several stellarHD cameras capture together, and it can also fire strobe lights in step with the exposure. stellarHD comes in 600/1,000 m, 6,000 m (Pro) and 11,000 m (Challenger) versions.
Many models use DWE's proprietary Aquagon optics, a seven-element lens with a sapphire outer element designed for the refractive index of water. The company says it reduces distortion to below 1.5 percent and largely removes the chromatic aberration seen when dry lenses sit behind flat ports. The explore3D system pairs two stellarHD cameras on a calibrated 100 mm baseline bracket to give real-time stereo vision with under 60 ms latency. With DWE's software it produces depth maps, point clouds, live visual SLAM and on-the-spot measurements, and DWE showed it at Oceanology International 2026. Supporting hardware includes the SVC Pro subsea vision computer (NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX 16 GB, 1 TB SSD, four synchronised camera inputs and Gigabit Ethernet), smaller PoE subsea vision computers, a three-camera subsea IP system rated to 600 m, a 7-port camera hub and the aquaLUX Nano and aquaLUX MAX lights, which can strobe in sync with the cameras. On the software side, DWE offers DWE OS, which turns cameras into configurable IP streams, the DeepWater Desktop application and a developer SDK with calibration files for OpenCV and integration with ROS or custom pipelines.
DWE cameras are used on ROVs, AUVs and uncrewed surface vessels for vehicle piloting, subsea infrastructure inspection, wide-area surveillance, photogrammetry and deep-sea exploration. Blue Robotics sells the exploreHD as an option for its vehicles. Ocean Aero uses DWE cameras on its Triton autonomous surface and underwater vehicle, and Sunfish Inc. and Seasats have also given testimonials. UK firm 3dMB Ltd has published photogrammetry work done with exploreHD cameras. Distributors include Blue Robotics in Torrance, California, NorthEast Ocean Systems in Providence, Rhode Island, and RobotShop in Mirabel, Quebec, plus international partners. Documentation is published at docs.dwe.ai.
Primary type & automation activities this supplier delivers:
More related news
- 1
- 2
- 3
-
4
Suzy Teele’s Mission at ARM Institute RobotToday · Oct 13, 2026
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
Contact DeepWater Exploration Inc.
WEBSITE
https://dwe.aiPHONE
+1 858 333 7985HEADQUARTERS
United States
Company Facts
Founded
2022
Primary Role
Component Supplier
Company Size
-
Primary Region
North America
Annual Sales
-
Funding Stage
-
Funding Total
-
Keywords
- DeepWater Exploration Inc.
- exploreHD
- stellarHD
- explore3D stereo camera
- Aquagon optics
- PrecisionSync
- UVC underwater camera
- subsea vision computer
- underwater VSLAM
- DWE OS
- Component Supplier
- Manufacturer
- Software/Algorithm
- Perception & Vision
- Compute & Chips
- Education & Research
- Defense & Security
- Oil
- Gas & Energy
