Self-sufficient craft set to monitor the oceans

摘要

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.rnGathering 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 flexible than either of these options.