Ocean robot Mercury withstands the onslaught of Hurricane Sandy

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

California-based Liquid Robotics, is engaged in the development of robotic devices for collecting and processing information on the chemical-physical properties of sea water, atmospheric and meteorological parameters for scientific and commercial purposes. Among the company's patents are a system of autonomous movement of ocean robots using wave energy, obtaining electric energy for robot devices using solar panels, and also controlling them in the ocean using GPS.


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


How the robot looks right behind the work in the ocean can be seen in the video:



With Sandy getting closer to the US coast, getting up-to-date information from the hell of a hurricane was a very urgent task, which would also give a complete picture of the capabilities of Mercury. In the end, everything ended successfully - the robot continuously transmitted information for scientists from Rutger University and the US Integrated Ocean Observing System.

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