Hurricane Sandy caused a lot of damage, and it’s going to take a long time to get everything fixed back up. Not everything succumbed to Sandy’s destructive force, however. This little surfing robot, for example, survived on the high seas despite the storm, never failing to do its duty all the while. More »
Amidst the wrath of Hurricane Sandy earlier this week, a seafaring robot bravely scoured the waters 100 miles east of New Jersey to monitor and transmit hurricane data. The robot, called Mercury, is actually built by Liquid Robotics, an ocean data service provider and developer of the Wave Glider. Liquid Robotics says that Mercury battled through Hurricane Sandy and successfully piloted through winds up to 70 knots while transmitting weather data in real time. Mercury’s sensors was able to gather a “dramatic” data from the surface of the ocean as Sandy neared landfall, with the barometric pressure of over 54.3 mbars to a low of 946 mbars.
“Mercury now joins the fleet of other Wave Gliders that have come through Category I hurricanes to successfully fulfill their missions,” said Dr. Edward Lu, chief of innovative applications for Liquid Robotics. “This is a testament to our robust and reliable technology and proof of its readiness for severe weather data collection.” The Wave Glider is an unmanned autonomous marine robot that features state-of-the-art with communication systems and computers. You can learn more about it here.
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Solar-powered Wave Glider robot tracks down sharks, Wave Glider to network world’s oceans,
The hunter becomes the hunted – but in a good way, of course. I am referring to this solar-powered robot created by scientists, where it will harness the power of the sun to keep it going, while it will do its job to track down sharks in order to keep tabs on their travel patterns as well as remaining numbers in the wild. Teams of scientists from Stanford University and Hopkins Marine Station in Monterey Bay have spent the better part of their lives tagging and tracking sharks so that they can better figure out these magnificent beasts’ mysterious migration patterns. (more…)
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Desperate Debra simulator for budding doctors to train with, Squishy robot changes color for camouflage purposes,
When they’re not breaking world records, fuel-hating Wave Glider seabots like to indulge in other hobbies, like shark tracking. One of the vessels has just been launched off the coast near San Francisco (vid after the break), adding a mobile worker to the existing local network of buoy-mounted receivers. They monitor the movements of electronically tagged sea life, including the fearsome Great White, picking up signals within a 1,000-foot range while researchers from Stanford University analyze the data from the safety of the shore. Better still, the free Shark Net iOS app gives anyone the chance to track these things, and activity should increase as the monitoring network (hopefully) expands along the west coast and more bots are introduced. You didn’t think the world’s fascination sharks was limited to only a single single week, did you?
Filed under: Robots, Science, Software
Autonomous Wave Glider bot launched to track sharks, beam real-time data to your iPhone and iPad originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 19 Aug 2012 19:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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