Robotic wave gliders to cross Pacific Ocean

In a bid to gather more data about the world's largest ocean, a Sunnyvale-based startup has launched four robotic wave gliders to cross the Pacific Ocean.

 

Liquid Robotics expects the robots, which will be traveling in pairs, to arrive in Australia or Japan in 300 days.

 

"The wave gliders are attempting to set a new world record for the longest distance ever attempted by an unmanned vehicle and will be collecting data about the Pacific ocean for use by scientists and students back on dry land," Google Earth product manager Jenifer Foulkes said in a blog post.

'R2D2s of the sea'  

She likened the gliders to "R2D2s of the sea," which she said will cross 25,000 miles over 300 days and collect over two million data points, helping build the record of oceanic knowledge.

 

Google Earth will cover the journey, dubbed the "Pacific Crossing (PacX) Challenge Expedition," she said.

 

One can download the expedition KML file or open the PacX Gallery page and click on the ship icon, then read updates from scientists sharing the latest robotic observations.

 

The data will include wave height in storms and weather measurements like barometric pressure, wind speed and air temperature.

 

Foulkes said the ship icon will represent the location of the wave gliders, starting in the San Francisco bay. Tie-up with Google and Virgin

 

A separate article on VentureBeat.com said the PacX Challenge (Crossing the Pacific) is sponsored by Google Earth and Virgin Oceanic.

 

It said the Wave Glider has been described as the perfect storm of electronics and satellite communication because it can be propelled in perpetuity, "harnessing energy from the rise and fall of waves while its solar powered instruments relay data to Iridium satellites."

 

Liquid Robotics chief executive officer Bill Vass said that for every knot that a tanker ship can save making the trip between China and the coast of the U.S., it will save $200,000 in bunker fuel.

 

Liquid Robotics chief of innovative applications Ed Lu estimated that collecting data with a Wave Glider is 100 times cheaper than a research ship.

 

“What things can we do 100 times better?” he said.

 

Citing figures from Bloomberg, VentureBeat said Liquid Robotics has $42 million in venture funding from investors such as Vantage Point Capital Partners and Schlumberger, a leading oilfield services company with extensive offshore drilling operations.

 

It noted the oil and gas industry is a prime customer for Liquid Robotics, because they spend hundreds of millions of dollars annually to charter boats and launch buoys to collect oceanographic data. — TJD, GMA News