The American company Saildrone announced plans to “attack on a hurricane” – the sea drone flotilla will be sent to study the dangerous weather phenomenon to study it in extremely close conditions. Most likely, these will be cars from the Saildrone Surveyor series, which have recently executed their first mission exemplary. A sea sailing ship without a crew made a way from San Francisco to Hawaii and made a map of the sea bottom on the path.
Saildrone built the first sailing drone back in 2018-a small 7-meter boat that can independently maneuver in the open sea. She receives energy from solar panels, which allows you to equip the drone with various sensors to study the environment. The pace of work is not particularly large, but such a ship can make autonomous flights up to 12 months and conduct long -term observations without control from the parties to people, although it is preserved as an option.
The first generation of Saildrone drones was used by Australian scientists to study the southern seas, and the new Saildrone Surveyor is designed to work in the entire world ocean. And first of all, where there are great depths to make their detailed cards. Sailing equipment and the absence of engines on board allow it to move almost silently, which is very convenient for the operation of hydroacoustic equipment – it scans the bottom at depths of up to 7000 m.
The new drone has a length of 24 m, uses the energy of the wind and the sun and can plan its work itself, focusing on the weather. On the first flight, he passed 4167 km in 28 days and applied data on 22,000 kV on the card. km of the ocean bottom. The accuracy of the measurements pleasantly surprised specialists, so now there are talk about the construction of a solid fleet of such ships that over the next decade to cartographs the entire ocean bottom of our planet.
Source — Saildrone