Immersion cooling firm Submer is developing a robot to automate the installation and removal of servers from immersion tanks.

Immersion tanks in data halls pose a different operational challenge to traditional racks. Servers and equipment must be lifted in and out of tanks vertically, rather than slid in and out horizontally.

In many deployments, it is common to have a portable crane – akin to the kind used to remove car engines – or a fixed overhead system if the room allows for it. Once servers are removed, the dielectric fluid must be collected and cleaned off the removed servers – often requiring a drip tray and a cleaning solution.

While Submer can currently provide a crane, the company’s robot aims to speed up and simplify this process, removing the need for any type of lifting systems and simplifying the fluid clean-up process.

The robotic crash cart will reportedly be coming out later this year – possibly around Q3.

Submer Labs first revealed the original version of its Autonomous Datacenter Assistant (ADA) back in October 2021. The machine was designed to be able to conduct environmental monitoring as well as commissioning and decommissioning – including inserting and removing servers from immersion tanks. The first-generation robot was demonstrated at a number of events that year.

The company declined to comment further or provide more details on the machine to DCD.

Submer isn’t the first to try and automate server deployments into immersion tanks. TMGcore launched Otto, a two-phase immersion cooling system that used robotic arms to handle maintenance tasks, around 2020. Rather than a mobile robot, however, Otto was a fixed system attached to the tank. Designed in partnership with Olympus Controls, it was equipped with an enclosure next to the tank housing backup servers and open slots for removed hardware.

TMGcore did announce a moving version of Otto in 2021 – called Ottomobile – that was attached to the back of a Ford Truck and designed as a mobile Edge data center rather than a data hall robot. The company has since been bought by Modine and been rolled into its Airedale unit.