by Daniel Terdiman April 8, 2013 3:30 AM PDT Link to the Article on CNet
After setting a world record for the longest distance traveled on Earth's surface by a robot, Liquid Robotics today unveiled the latest version of its Wave Glider technology.
The updated platform is capable of autonomously prowling the world's seas while analyzing, processing, and transmitting data gathered from a wide variety of on-board sensors.
The new Wave Glider SV3 is essentially a self-powered sea-faring data center, a system that gives users the ability to investigate the world's water ways for months on end. The SV3 features a hybrid propulsion system, Silicon Valley's Liquid Robotics said, that can drive the Wave Glider on either wave or solar power. It also comes with a vectored thruster that lets the robot continue its missions in high seas and dead calms alike.
At its heart, the SV3 is meant to carry a heavy duty load of sensors designed to serve everything from the oil and gas industry to fisheries to coast guards and the military. Its power management systems were designed, the company said, so that its on-board servers can continuously bring in data, and simultaneously analyze the information before transmitting conclusions via satellite communications.
The SV3 was also designed with a data center-like architecture allowing multiple users to each have their own data gathering and crunching take place at the same time, all totally independent of the other. And because the computers are meant to be strong enough to do most of the processing locally, the new Wave Glider can send back conclusions via high-bandwidth, low-power connectivity rather than large amounts of raw data that must then be analyzed once they arrive.
In a sense, Liquid Robotics is hoping that the Wave Glider SV3 can be the Amazon Web Services -- a floating server rack -- of the open oceans, said the company CEO Bill Vass. The system can be dynamically configurable, with multiple ARM-based processors, and can use either solid-sate or spinning disk storage. Customers can choose whatever combination works best for them.
The SV3 is also fully backward compatible with Liquid Robotics' previous generation Wave Glider SV2.
Comments
That propulsion system is a truly elegant and simple technology.
The materials it is made of or coated with could completely counter any kind of marine growth and with a little work you could harvest a portion of it as power so solar cells in clouds or at night would not be a problem.
Truly great idea, I can see fleets of little marine robots wandering all over the place, at least most people aren't worried about having their privacy violated there, Oh wait, Bikini beach!
IMHO this propulsion system is derivative of sea electric mill( similar to wind mill) where waves motion generates the mechanical energy to drive the electric generators. Read it some where long back and supposed used/invented by scientists in Japan I think.
Nothing like using Mother Earth to drive our discovery of her, meaning the propulsion system. This is really cool.
@Jack, I've noticed the same thing with water vehicles. I personally believe that Autonomous Water Vehicles are becoming extremely more popular because the ocean/water is the largest terrain on the planet and the fact that it's the least explored because of human limitations. Exploring the ocean and other celestial bodies besides Earth are going to Lead the way in the UAS Industry in my personal opinion because they can do something humans physically can't.
@Morli, Thank you so much for providing the video of the propulsion system. I was blown away at the ingenuity of how the system works which I would of never known without that video.
@Andreas, Maybe they could make mini water drones to clean off the algae! :)
Sadly, the wave glider is patented, (USPTO) but it's an example of financial motivation bringing something to the world that wouldn't exist, otherwise. No-one complains when the invention is good enough.
There's been a lot of investment in water vehicles, lately. Wonder if there was a breakthrough or if they all watched EEVBlog & wanted to get in Dave Jones' career.
what is more interesting is its propulsion system seen here