
Ocean-going robots that could revolutionize fishing, drilling, and science - walrus01
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-15/this-man-is-building-an-armada-of-saildrones-to-conquer-the-ocean
======
ganashaw
I work for a company that builds boats for many of the same goals in a more
traditional form factor. The potential of autonomous marine vehicles is very
high, and a very exciting field to be working in.
[https://www.asvglobal.com/](https://www.asvglobal.com/)

(If you're interested, we're hiring!)

~~~
mojomark
Do you need anybody in the US? I'm a senior marine engineer, working on my
masters in CS. I'm interested in larger UUV's and USV's in general.

~~~
ganashaw
Most of our software roles (one of the biggest teams we're growing at the
moment) are located in the U.S.! We'd be very interested to hear from you.

~~~
mojomark
OK, interesting, I'll reach out and inquire. Thanks

~~~
w_t_payne
ASV global is an amazing company to work for.

A unique and very special group of people. I cannot recommend the place highly
enough.

------
e12e
> “It’s fuel, consumables, and I don’t even want to tell you what our
> satellite bill is for data,”

Interesting - the circumference of the earth is roughly 40 thousand km. If
these could manage to lift an antenna either 140m (or equivalently 70m for all
participants) - distance to Horizon should be roughly 40 km. So a thousand
boats could form a theoretical relay net around a theoretical line in the
ocean reaching around the globe.

More to the point, with a fidonet-/usenet-like stop-and-forward system - it
might be viable to get data to land quicker than waiting for the drone to
arrive with hard drives - and with greater/cheaper bandwidth than via
satellite?

~~~
FLUX-YOU
If high endurance air drones are advanced enough, you can coordinate sea and
air nodes to make a mesh that avoids clouds and line of sight all-together so
you don't have to string the network over the sea level horizon. Maybe have
autonomous platforms that allow both to refuel too if they use hybrid systems.

~~~
dithering
Balloons, maybe.

~~~
namibj
Apart from wind moving it to the side, it would not be a fundamental problem
to fly a tethered blimp with a pair of single mode fiber and a thin aluminum
wire that is driven in resonance [0] with the surface capacitance the blimp
has, relative to earth, up to about 20-50 km. The breaking length of the fiber
comes out at ~120 km, and you have to spare some tensile strength to hold the
aluminum wire.

This is not hard, and for 8km height you could manufacture them for under
$2k/piece. Even if they'd be made to work with hydrogen, as that raises the
demands on the construction. If you'd find the FCC to be willing to allow
something like this and are able to handle both thunderstorms and just the
general wind load on the tether, this should not be hard.

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-
wire_transmission_line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-
wire_transmission_line)

~~~
petre
Lightning + aluminium wire is a problem. I suspect an electrical current will
form in the wire even w/o lightning because of static electricity. Also the
wire is a hazard if it breaks and falls down. It will probably cut everything
in its path.

~~~
namibj
Yes, probably. Maybe you'd have to fly it at a place where you don't need to
worry about lightning. But that seems rather restricting. Though, for high-
bandwidth applications, it might then be necessary to fly local power, and
have the whole system sit over the cloud layer, at about 50km.

Regarding the damage from it when falling down, you have to remember that each
fiber weighs 50g/km, and the wire is also below 1kg/km, even for rather low
heights. This should not be a problem, considering the ease of breaking an
optical fiber optic at any remotely sharp edge. A small bird (the size your
cat can catch) could probably snap it if he hit's it with some force.

~~~
petre
It will create a lightning discharge path regardless if you fly it over the
cloud layer.

1 kg/km • 50 km • 9.8 m•s^-2 • 50 km = 24.5 MJ

10 MJ = kinetic energy of the armor-piercing round fired by the assault guns
of the ISU-152 tank

I think that's just about enough energy to cut just about any living thing in
half. Maybe it work if the cable was made of spider silk or Kevlar.

------
tsaoyu
We build an open-source sailing boat (MIT license)
[https://blog.sotonsailrobot.org](https://blog.sotonsailrobot.org) and we will
host World Robotics Sailing Championship this year
[https://www.roboticsailing.org/2018/](https://www.roboticsailing.org/2018/)

------
vermontdevil
_Younger researchers no longer want to spend that much time at sea, cut off
from most of the internet. “It’s really hard to get the younger generation
excited about going to sea,” says NOAA’s Meinig. “People think it’s romantic
and then find they can’t text their friends and don’t have access to hundreds
of channels of TV. It’s just a different style of life.”_

Fascinating. I guess the Saildrone is the ideal solution.

~~~
nonbel
I wonder if this is really a generational thing vs a different type of person
winning NOAA grants than in the past. Ie, people more interested in hype,
advocacy, networking, etc than science.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
Have an upvote, because I think you're bang on target.

------
asciimo
"Revolutionize fishing" seems to mean selling data to fisheries so they can
pull even more fish out of the ocean.

~~~
spurgu
Yeah this was my first thought as well. :( Like we need more effective methods
of raping the oceans. Hopefully the scientific research will cover the
potential drawbacks.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
One upshot of better tech is significantly less bycatch, at least in regions
where per-species quotas are strictly enforced. I'm told the latest sonars can
distinguish both the species and age of fish in a shoal.

------
grogers
Another neat autonomous boat concept is [https://www.liquid-robotics.com/wave-
glider/how-it-works/](https://www.liquid-robotics.com/wave-glider/how-it-
works/) which uses waves for propulsion.

------
grepthisab
A friend of mine runs this one in Cambridge, really amazing tech:

Autonomous Marine Systems

[http://www.automarinesys.com](http://www.automarinesys.com)

------
__aeneas
Saw the video yesterday on YouTube. I wonder what happens if they get into
very strong winds or very strong swell - if they tip over, do they get up by
themselves? What happens if they submerge?

Apparently they figured out how to do it, but my question is, how exactly are
they doing it?

~~~
mhb
Isn't that what a keel does?

~~~
__aeneas
Yes, but a keel is also limited right? It's still possible to tip over and -
if potentially submerged, not come back up?

But to be honest, I have very little knowledge on this topic, so maybe a keel
is all it needs!

~~~
kpil
As long as it not fills with water, I'd say it will right it self.

On a traditional boat the sails can dig down in the water and needs to be
released rather quickly, and you don't want the hatch to be open, but neither
of this seems to be a problem here.

~~~
usrusr
Theoretically, a sailing sensor drone could even be constructed as a
submarine, sailing on the surface in regular conditions but able to dive into
the currents if conditions get too harsh. It would not be able to maneuver or
communicate while submerged, but it could resurface on a timer, or use sensor
data to identify to make an educated guess. (This could also qualify as a
piracy countermeasure, should the drones get targeted for parts)

------
amelius
> They’ve all come back without a single scratch, just a beard of barnacles

Solution:

[https://wyss.harvard.edu/barnacles-and-mussels-wont-stick-
to...](https://wyss.harvard.edu/barnacles-and-mussels-wont-stick-to-boats-
with-this-fully-slippery-coating/)

~~~
adrianmonk
Whoa, if they mandated that on boats, I wonder if it could stop the spread of
invasive zebra mussels between lakes.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra_mussel#North_American_in...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra_mussel#North_American_invasion)

One way they spread is by sticking to boats that owners take to a different
lake without cleaning them. Cleaning isn't optional, but since it takes work
it is unrealistic to believe everyone is going to actually do it. So despite
campaigns to prevent it, zebra mussels keep spreading.

~~~
contingencies
Many of the traditional anti-fouling treatments are poisonous to marine
ecosystems. I've heard some evidence that efficacy is inversely proportional
to environmental friendliness with real world commercially available coatings.

------
Luc
I couldn't figure out whether these things follow the rules of the road. Do
they at least have AIS receivers?

------
carapace
I'm so jelly! ("jealous")

I've been (slowly and painfully) working my ways towards constructing a self-
reproducing robo-boat swarm for a few years now, ever since learning about the
Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

My idea is to set up a simple artificial ecosystem of interacting bots that
collect and recycle oceanic trash to create more of themselves. This permits
exponential growth, making it realistic to attempt to tackle such a large-
scale problem from a relatively tiny "nucleus".

I want to use Molten salt oxidation [1] to convert trash to "synthesis gas"
[2] then feed that through a water column to convert CO+H2O to CO2+H2. Recover
the hydrogen for power (more power, the MSO reaction is exothermic) and feed
the carbon dioxide to algae tanks. The algae can be processed to create both
plastic membranes and a kind of ocean-water-proof glue. Rather than build
boats, you make spheroids out of the plastic and glue them together to make
foam. (I call it "spittlebug architecture" [3].) Foam and tendons allow you to
make e.g. artificial hydras [4] which can be attached at their bases to long
conduits (also make of glue-foam) to collect and sort trash and carry it (via
peristalsis) to the MSO unit. The long hydra-lined conduits can be arranged in
a (huge) spiral which can then be driven to rotate by positioning of sails and
rudders embedded in the conduit. The MSO unit would be in the center.

The idea, at every stage, is to do and use the minimum of action and materials
and energy throughout the system to maximize scalability and throughput-per-
unit.

The outputs of the system will be power, fresh water, building material, and
packets of recovered molecules (the ones that aren't made of H C or O) to
hopefully be reused.

Glue + membranes + geometry + pressure = An open-ended variety of light-weight
rigid structures with a very easy construction method. [5]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_oxidation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_oxidation)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesis_gas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesis_gas)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spittle_bug](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spittle_bug)

[4]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydras](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydras)

[5]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflatable_air_cushion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflatable_air_cushion)
& [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air-
supported_structure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air-supported_structure)

~~~
Jedi72
You get an upvote for the sheer audacity of this project. Hope you make good
progress, good luck.

~~~
carapace
Cheers!

It's been slow going, working mostly in my spare time, but I'm committed. I've
got two boats now for hosting the initial "kernel", and some time this summer
to double down. One benefit of taking so long is that neural networks et. al.
have taken off in the meantime and that should solve a few problems that might
otherwise have been hairy.

------
raducu
I wonder how long before drugs are smuggled with drone ships.

~~~
WJW
Minus a couple of years, that is already a thing. Not sail drones though, as
far as I know.

~~~
raducu
I know about drones smuggling small time packages in prisons and such.

I was talking about a drone shipping tonns of drugs from South America to USA
or Europe.

~~~
WJW
Yes, that was what I meant too.

------
NinaJZapala
Would they be able to clean up all the plastic and trash in the oceans? That's
the robot I want :)

------
lazyjones
What kind of permission/license is needed for such craft in
national/international waters?

------
azinman2
Totally off topic aside: I’m seeing a lot of Bloomberg links these days and
I’m constantly “over the free limit.” Sometimes the “web” strategy works, and
sometimes it doesn’t (like this article for me).

If I add up all the sources that are typical for HN it’s quite a lot.
Bloomberg alone is $40/Mo now long term, plus nytimes, Washington Post,
economist, FT, etc.

I already pay for two of these — I don’t feel the need for yet another, and
I’m not going to start browsing Bloomberg for non-linked content.

What I’d like is the ability to pay for a universal “HN” articles membership
to ANY website. If it’s linked from HN, let me read the full article, but it’s
ok if I can’t browse the website.

A lot of publishers effectively do this for Facebook for free; why not for
smaller aggregators for a membership?

~~~
trumped
That's a good idea, but in the meantime:
[http://archive.is/DoZFv](http://archive.is/DoZFv)

~~~
tim333
or delete the cookies

~~~
trumped
There's more then one way to skin a cat, but none of them work 100% of the
time for paywalls

------
baxtr
What’s next? Car drones, rail drones and sub-marine drones? Bike drones?!

~~~
sharpercoder
I imagine autonomous bicycles using gyroscopes to stay stable, highly
integrated camera's with environment comprehension (Waymo off-the-shelf chips)
to redistribute them over the city at night.

~~~
fotbr
I love the vision of a fleet of riderless bikes taking themselves to where the
system anticipates their need for the next day.

However, I also suspect that there will be a lot of car/automated-bicycle
accidents since bicycle visibility at night isn't particularly high, and
relies a lot on the rider's choice of visible clothing.

~~~
icebraining
That's seems the easiest to solve, just put lights on the bike. There are
already many products for this, some of them very visible.

