Behind each video feed of oil billowing out of the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico is a robot about the size of a minibus built at an industrial center in this Louisiana oil town.

The robots, which go by the name Millennium, are constructed as if they're on a voyage to another world -- one that's "harsher than space," says Mark Campbell, the manufacturing manager at Oceaneering International's production site.

This may come as a surprise since the oil cam produces images so clear they look like they could have been filmed at the bottom of a neighborhood pool. But keep in mind that these robots -- which hover like confused cuttlefish in front of the busted pipe 24 hours a day -- navigate a world that's 5,000 feet below the surface of the ocean.

It's pitch black, just barely above freezing and the pressure under a mile of water is about 10 times as intense as that in an aerosol canister. People would be flattened and killed at such depths.

"We're the eyes," says Campbell, who worked on a professional race-car team and in the aerospace industry before turning his eyes to the deep ocean, which he sees as a much bigger challenge. "There's no other way to see what's going on down there."

The challenges of working in the deep sea -- and our apparent lack of understanding in how to do so -- have been thrust into the national spotlight in recent weeks, as the country debates the merits of drilling for oil in increasingly deeper waters.

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