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A Fleet of Sailing Robots Sets Out To Quantify the Oceans (bloomberg.com)
pacopico writes: A start-up in California called Saildrone has built a fleet of robotic sailboats that are gathering tons of data about the oceans. The saildrones rely on a hard, carbon-fiber sail to catch wind, and solar panels to power all of their electronics and sensors. "Each drone carries at least $100,000 of electronics, batteries, and related gear," reports Businessweek. "Devices near the tip of the sail measure wind speed and direction, sunlight, air temperature and pressure, and humidity. Across the top of the drone's body, other electronics track wave height and period, carbon dioxide levels, and the strength of the Earth's magnetic field. Underwater, sensors monitor currents, dissolved oxygen levels, and water temperature, acidity, and salinity. Sonars and other acoustic instruments try to identify animal life." So far they've been used to find sharks, monitor fisheries, check on climate change and provide weather forecasts. Saildrone just raised $90 million to build a fleet of 1,000 drones, which it thinks will be enough to measure all of the world's oceans.
Catch a drone, load it up with contraband, release it, catch it at the destination, retrieve your stuff.
Or, just build ones that look just like them - coastguard will likely ignore them (no humans on board to even as to stop and board).
More like 5k for each sensor. Check out Sea-Bird - they make the gold standard for many types of oceanographic sensors. They are very expensive and very good.
With traditional oceanographic measurements, the most expensive part of acquiring data is physically going to the location from where you want to acquire the measurement. The cost of the sensors is nothing in comparison. As a result, you have expensive, high quality sensors being the norm. With these autonomous boats there might be a push to reduce sensor costs because the sensors will make up a greater percentage of the total cost. Time will tell...
They have sonar? Set them loose to find MH370.....