Homo Sapiens:Scientist plunges into work creating deep-sea probes 03/26/2005 By TOSHIHIDE UEDA,The Asahi Shimbun Developing a robot that can independently quarry the secrets of the deep sea is Taro Aoki's dream. For now, the closest he has come is the ``Urashima,'' an autonomous underwater vehicle developed by the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture. Aoki, 57, is the program director for the Urashima, which takes its name from a traditional Japanese folk-tale character who rode a sea turtle and visited a deep-sea castle. The real Urashima is loaded with state-of-the-art technology. Cable-less and unmanned,...