# Getting submarines talking to airplanes, finally

Until recently, there has never been a way to send communication signals between air and water. If an underwater submarine passes beneath a plane in the sky, there's been no way for them to communicate with each other without having the submarine surface, jeopardizing its location to an adversary. Fadel Adib and Francesco Tonolini of MIT Media Lab have developed a way to connect these seemingly dissonant mediums through something called Translational Acoustic-RF communication, or TARF. Using sound waves from underwater, and radar from the air, messages can be transmitted by creating faint ripples on the surface of the water.

Professor: Fadel Adib Student author: Francesco Tonolini Student Collaborator: JunSu Jang Video Producer: Jimmy Day

More information at: tarf.media.mit.edu

More information at: https://www.media.mit.edu/

License: CC-BY-4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)

- Kind: Short
- Year: 2018
- Runtime: 2 min
- By: MIT Media Lab
- Genres: Science
- Archive: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Getting_submarines_talking_to_airplanes,_finally.webm)
- Licence or status: [CC BY 3.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0) (as the archive states it)
- Credit: MIT Media Lab
- Who can watch: Tweens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/commons/78924051?play=1)