No Sailors Needed: Robot Sailboats Scour the Oceans for Data

Isn't that the company James Gosling went off to?

That's a new, fancier Wave Glider. They've been making those for about 10 years. I heard their designer speak at Stanford. On the original version, the only powered moving part was the rudder, and they only had one underwater "wing". The utter simplicity of the thing is impressive. They're surprisingly controllable; they can generally keep to within 100 meters of the desired course. They communicate over Iridium. In early tests, they first ran one around Hawaii, then went from Hawaii to Monterey Bay, then up to the coast of Alaska and back.

The Coast Guard classifies them as "floating debris", so they don't have to show navigation lights or obey the Rules of the Road. Collision with a ship would cause no more damage to the ship than hitting a loose surfboard. Liquid Robotics' control center watches ship positions from AIS and maneuvers the little boards out of the way.

The wave gliders are some awesome technology - I've been keeping an eye on their development for a while. Unfortunately they've only been hiring out of a very small pool and it's about impossible to get your foot in the door.

Narco-submarines already exist and the cost of a manned boat would likely be cheaper than an autonomous one.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narco-submarine

You need to control both harbors for that though. If you have a crew, they can make the transaction with another organisation and you don't need any local resources.

...cool boat. Poor website.

Why, oh why, do designers insist on interfering with the simple act of scrolling through their website? Don't mess with my scroll speed. Ever.

I wonder the same thing about autonomous trucks.

There's likely to be a significant period between the first driver-less trucks transporting goods across unpopulated areas and the vehicles being competent enough to detect the fact that someone is unloading the vehicle and that that car sitting in front of you is not traffic, but is just there to make you stop while you are pilfered.

The move from a crime involving people to one only involving property may well lower the bar to would be criminals.

I was thinking the same, but then I thought about how extremely huge the ocean is and how hard it would be to find such drone. They could also adapt counter measures like painting it darker and make a smaller frame.

It's small, maybe the chance of anyone finding it in the ocean and him beeing a pirate that want's to deal with that GPS tracker on board are slim.

Jacking drones for ransom from a company that works directly with the US government? That might work a few times but how long until the coast guard intervenes?

Not to mention that you need a ship, probably multiple people and quite a bit of time to find such a drone, which I imagine you don't want to do too close to the coast. I doubt this can be done in an economical fashion especially considering opportunity costs. Anyone who's able to do this can probably get a more stable and higher income trafficking drugs.

Do something along the lines of what commerce raiders did in WWII - give every hundredth or so drone ship some concealed anti-ship missiles.

Actually, a more realistic problem is damage caused by running into the things. They're basically logs floating awash. The ones I've seen have a small mast with a flag on them, and you could certainly fit them with a radar reflector, but they're still really low in the water and very hard to see. And they're certainly not smart enough to spot an oncoming vessel and take evasive action.

Run into one in a fibreglass yacht and you could be having a very bad day.

Simplest solution is not to pay the ransom, which is a lot easier when it's a drone than a ship with crew. That eliminates the possibility that actually hunting for them becomes a viable business model unless you've got a high-value black market for any of the on-board tech, and I doubt they'll send many near the coast of Somalia or Mindanao where there's a relatively high density of pirates that might steal them out of sheer opportunism.

Perhaps it could go under water until the pirate given up and moved on.

What is tripulation?

UNCLOS says they're not armed at all.

Love that story.

Who's making the RoboBaleenBarge?

Autonomous barges that scoop plastic debris from the gyres. Discerning enough to filter out man made crap. From infinitesimal to big in size. Allows critters to escape.

Something like Mr Trash Wheel robust enough for open ocean. http://baltimorewaterfront.com/healthy-harbor/water-wheel/

Maybe powered by waves, like these wave gliders. Or solar. Or the material it gathers.

The gathered bundles are in turned gathered by bigger barges. Or dropped into a trench. Or used to fab new barges.

A design that is super simple and easy to replicate.

PS- Yes, I know about theoceancleanup.com effort. I'm bearish on that design. Though I hope I'm proven wrong.

how have i never seen that before? excellent story! reminds me of aldiss's "who can replace a man" crossed with "accelerando"