US Company Designs Sailing Drones to Watch the Oceans
Monitoring the world's oceans isn't an easy job. But one US-based company has designed unmanned sailboats to make it easier.
Called Saildrone, the company has created two different types of unmanned boats. The first, the Saildrone Explorer, is 7 meters long; and the second, the new Saildrone Surveyor, is 22 meters long.
Both vehicles use wind to move and solar panels to power onboard equipment — though the larger of the two sometimes uses a motor. They're both monitored by a human via satellite, but the vehicles can sail themselves to their chosen destinations.
The smaller vehicle can travel up to about 15 kilometers per hour, while the larger one travels at over 18 kilometers per hour. The company says the boats can cover an average of 100 kilometers a day, enabling them to reach almost any ocean location within 30 days from the nearest shore.
Once out at sea, the Saildrones can run for 12 months, working in remote areas and under extreme weather conditions. They use sensors, radar and cameras to measure everything from ocean currents to fish populations, wind speed and carbon dioxide emissions.
The vehicles can also measure depth to help map the seafloor — only about 20% of which has been mapped in detail. The larger vehicle is capable of measuring down to 7,000 meters below the surface — deep enough to cover most of the world's oceans.
All this data is sent back via satellite to help with things like monitoring climate change, forecasting the weather and even finding illegal fishing boats.
The smaller Saildrone Explorer has already collected data in places like the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic, as well as the Mediterranean Sea. In January, the larger Surveyor was tested off the coast of San Francisco before sailing to Hawaii.
The company hopes that these wind- and solar-powered vehicles could one day replace traditional research ships, which it says are more expensive, worse for the environment and more dangerous for the humans who operate them.
