Saildrone has quickly risen to the surface of the growing field of autonomous seagoing vehicles — a category you could be forgiven for not knowing about, but which is increasingly important across numerous industries. Its latest vessel, the Voyager, strikes a balance between its shorter Explorer and large-scale Surveyor, and they’re already making one a week.
The Voyager is a 33-foot uncrewed surface vehicle or USV, intended for near-shore maritime operations like coastal and lake mapping. In addition to the expected sonar equipment, each craft is equipped with traditional cameras, radar, and “sub-surface passive acoustics” to help build a picture of the sea or lake bed down to a depth of 900 feet. It also integrates other improvements, like more power and a more consistent data uplink.
You can imagine how useful it would be to send one of these things around every month to prov...
