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Earth

Oceanology: Robot 'gliders' swim the undersea world

24 March 2010

Âé¶¹´«Ã½. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Engage the wave drive

(Image: Liquid Robotics)

THE way we study oceans could be transformed by a high-tech “surfboard” that generates its own power from sunlight and water waves. The device is capable of navigating at sea for months at a time and recently completed a 4000-kilometre trip from Hawaii to San Diego, California.

Gathering data on the oceans has always been difficult: survey ships are costly to deploy and buoys take data only at single sites. So engineers at Liquid Robotics, a company based in Kamuela, Hawaii, decided to build an autonomous vehicle that would be cheaper and more…

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