Liquid Robotics’ Wave Gliders can travel at a one million nm

Liquid Robotics, a company designing and building wave and solar powered ocean robots, created a fleets of Wave Gliders which reached 1 million nautical miles at sea –a great success for the unmanned surface vehicle (USV) industry.
The Wave Glider is the first USV to complete missions from the Arctic to the Southern Ocean, operate through 17 hurricanes/typhoons, and achieve a Guinness World Record for the “longest journey by an autonomous, unmanned surface vehicle on the planet.” One million nautical miles is the equivalent to 1.29x round trip journey to the moon (at the moon’s furthest point) or approximately 46 times around the world.
Gary Gysin, President and CEO of Liquid Robotics, commented: “We’re leveraging this expertise to help build an ocean sensor network with Wave Gliders serving as the communications hub and mobile sensor platform. Our vehicles are collecting and transmitting data today that is too costly or difficult to obtain, but is vital to our understanding and protection of the ocean.”
For the past ten years, governments and organizations have turned to automatic drones to lower costs and risks of routine operations at sea, as well as to improve ocean access and monitoring of the maritime environments. Wave Gliders have already been successfully deployed to extend the range and effectiveness of traditional systems in defense, oil and gas, and scientific markets.
“For the unmanned systems industry surpassing one million nautical miles is a landmark event,” said Dr. James Bellingham, Director Center for Marine Robotics, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. “It clearly proves Wave Gliders (USVs) can sustain long duration operations required for scientific and defense missions. They’re changing how we explore and protect the ocean.”