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A Fleet of Sailing Robots Sets Out To Quantify the Oceans (bloomberg.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the eyes-on-the-prize dept.

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.

12 of 76 comments (clear)

  1. Alternate headline: by roc97007 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Hundred thousand dollar pieces of equipment are just floating around free!"

    --
    Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    1. Re:Alternate headline: by flopsquad · · Score: 2

      ^^ First thought. They make them sound like floating treasure chests. At least *try* to play it off in the press brief.

      "Yup $100K: They cost $80K in labor to build, carry $10K in sensors, and deploy with $10K worth of sharks with laserbeams and that audio weapon that makes you shit yourself. Foff, pirates."

      --
      Nothing posted to /. has ever been legal advice, including this.
    2. Re:Alternate headline: by thesupraman · · Score: 2

      There is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY there are hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment on board.
      Even if they bought everything retail down at the local shop, that would be simply ridiculous.

      What they mean is 'we did a bit of hardware development, cut ourselves a MASSIVE overheads and development
      markup, then we claim its worth this'

      I can guarantee that any of 1000 small product development locations in China could build them for under $1000
      in electronics. Easily. Without even trying.

      One of the projects I have right here has high resolution GPS and 6dof inertial, high resolution pressure, 100km capable radio,
      32bit micro, batteries to store enough energy for 6 months operation (including the radio), flash storage in the GBytes, solar for recharge,
      waterproof packaging, and the total cost is under $100usd...
      Now, they would need better radio (I would imagine), and a few more sensors.

      But $100k? just simple 'give us money, we are a startup' BS.

    3. Re:Alternate headline: by willy_me · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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...

    4. Re:Alternate headline: by roc97007 · · Score: 2

      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...

      So, it would be worthwhile me developing a fleet of pirate robots to plunder that booty.

      I SO want to see that on youtube.

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
  2. Smugling opportinities? by misnohmer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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).

  3. Funny... by scdeimos · · Score: 2
    From TFA:

    "What's the definition of a sailor?" he [Richard Jenkins] asks while launching one of the drones off the Alameda dock. "A primitive organism for turning beer into urine."

  4. While you are out there... by Tulsa_Time · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Pick up all the plastic trash....

    --
    5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
  5. Re:Really awesome... by plopez · · Score: 2

    The reason we do research, real research not the "I researched on Stacker Flow and copied some code", is that we do not know so we go and look.

    If you you know how long it will take, how much it will cost, and what the results will be it isn't research.

    --
    putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
  6. Re:Doing the same as Argo, then by Whorhay · · Score: 2

    Argo floats spend the vast majority of their time far under the surface of the ocean. They also passively float with the currents. The Saildrones monitor surface conditions of both the ocean and the atmosphere as well as use sonar to possibly monitor wildlife. The drones can be directed to sail to and monitor anywhere that is deep enough for them to not run aground.

  7. perfect purpose by fred133 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    They have sonar? Set them loose to find MH370.....

  8. Re:Cue pirate memes... by citylivin · · Score: 2

    " Locating them would be trivial. Harvesting them for anything of value would be equally trivial."

    I am wondering how you are going to find a single 2 meter craft in the entire ocean. Trivially?

    So say you do end up locating one, you then spend hundreds if not thousands on boat gas to get to it, then you have to disable it without triggering its possible security (that say sends a picture of the intruder right back to hq on the sat link).

    Then you have the probe onboard your vessel. You have 80k worth of oceanographic sensors, a few solar panels and a pretty worthless carbon fibre drone body. To whom do you then sell these specialized ocean monitoring sensors to? craigslist? ebay?

    no fucking part of that exercise could be described as trivial dude! use your head. they aren't filled with gold or other things that can be easily melted down. When you are paying 5k for a sensor, it for sure has a globally unique ID that can be traced back to the owner, trivially.

    its like saying well i can just go to the airport and steal a plane, they are worth millions! Yeah, you can, and then what.

    --
    As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy