Ocean robot Mercury withstood the onslaught of Hurricane Sandy

The photo is an autonomous ocean robot Mercury, who worked in the open ocean about a week ago, monitoring weather conditions in the very center of the raging Hurricane Sendi. The robot sailed about a hundred miles in the conditions of a wind with a speed of 70 knots and at a differential pressure of 40 mm. Hg up to 710 mm. Hg Art., while transferring the collected information in real time to the command center of the company-creator of Liquid Robotics. It is also interesting that the company's founders are former employees of Sun Microsystems, and the chief software architect at the company is none other than James Gosling, the creator of Java, who considered that ocean exploration is better than working at Google.

California-based company Liquid Robotics , is developing robotic devices for collecting and processing information on the chemical and physical properties of sea water, atmospheric and meteorological parameters for scientific and commercial purposes. The company's patents include the autonomous movement of ocean robots using wave energy, the generation of electrical energy for robot devices using solar panels, and their control in the ocean using GPS.

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The operation of the ocean robot is shown in the figure below:


How the robot looks right at work in the ocean can be assessed in the video:



In the conditions of Sandy's approach to the US coast, obtaining relevant information from the hurricane hell itself was a very urgent task, which would also give a complete picture of the capabilities of Mercury. As a result, everything ended successfully - the robot continuously transmitted information for scientists from the University of Rutger and the US Integrated Ocean Observing System.

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