In 2022, deep-sea mapping company Magellan Ltd collected data to produce a Titanic digital twin – the largest underwater digital twin ever. The results of their six-week data collection effort and two years of process/analysis is now featured in the new National Geographic documentary Titanic: The Digital Resurrection (now streaming on Disney+). The scan combined high-resolution photogrammetry and laser scanning to generate a 16-terabyte digital twin of the site – a bit too large for an email attachment. Two robotic submersibles, named Romeo and Juliet, spent three weeks at a depth of 3,800 meters, equipped with powerful lights to illuminate the pitch-black seafloor and take over 715,000 photographs from every angle. These images were paired with millions of laser-based spatial measurements, creating a centimeter-accurate 3D model that researchers can now explore in full.
The scan revealed dramatic details: a ruptured porthole likely caused by the iceberg, an open steam valve suggesting Titanic’s engineers kept power flowing as the ship went down, and fresh insight into the nature of the hull breach. A simulation using structural data from the scan shows the ship sustained a line of small punctures—some the size of a sheet of paper—spread across six watertight compartments, while Titanic was only built to stay afloat with four compromised. The slow but inevitable flooding proved fatal. For the lidar and photogrammetry community, this project is a showcase of what’s possible when robotics, light, and laser scanning come together to document history in even the most extreme environments.
This is not the first effort to scan the Titanic. Read our 2018 post – Scanning the Titanic – about OceanGate’s efforts.
For more details on the implications of the digital and the story of the Titanic, I suggest this article by the BBC.
