In a bid to break the world record for the longest distance travelled by an unmanned vehicle, four?robots called?Wave Gliders recently left San Francisco to journey 33,000 nautical miles (or 38,000 miles) across the Pacific. The 300-day voyage called Pacific Crossing (PacX) can be tracked by anyone through Google Earth's Ocean Showcase feature.?Google Earth manager Jenifer Austin Foulkes calls them "R2-D2s of the sea."
True to their name, the machines created by Liquid Robotics float on the surface of the ocean instead of traveling underwater. Waves both power their propulsion systems and present a potent threat to their journey, as the floaters could be destroyed by particularly strong ones. The four robots will travel to Hawaii, before splitting up in pairs ? two of them will continue their journey toward Australia, while the other two will head to Japan.
Aside from attempting to break a world record, the Wave Gliders will collect oceanic data such as salinity, temperature, clarity, oxygen content, weather, and wave features and currents. The sensors that collect all this information are powered by the sun through the?solar cells that cover the floater's surface. Transmitters then send all the information back to Liquid Robotics through a satellite network.
While some of the data can be accessed through Google Earth, only researchers who register with the company will have access to everything. Liquid Robotics is asking the scientific community for project abstracts, and will grant 6-month carte blanche use of the Wave Gliders to the top five proposals. After this initial launch, Liquid Robotics hopes to make the Wave Gliders available for commercial purposes. Possible applications include monitoring currents in shipping lanes, running offshore fish farms, guarding wild fisheries, and collecting data to better understand the role of the ocean in the earth's carbon cycle.
Liquidr via?PopSci,?IEEE
This article was written by Mariella Moon and originally appeared on Tecca
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