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Underwater Robot Glider Harvests Ocean Heat

by Evan Shamoon on February 12, 2008 at 09:02 AM




The future is awesome!

U.S. scientists are testing a robotic glider that harvests heat energy from the ocean ... and guess what? It works.

The yellow, torpedo-shaped machine has been combing the depths of seas around the Caribbean since the end of last year (covering thousands of miles in the process), and has just returned home to roost.

The team behind glider glider believes that battery-free wonder could undertake oceanographic surveys for up to six months at a time.

"We are tapping a virtually unlimited energy source for propulsion," said Dave Fratantoni of the Wood's Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOi). A bit of rain came upon this parade courtesy of Steve McPhail, an expert in autonomous underwater vehicles at the National Oceanography Centre (NOC), Southampton, who said that the machine would not do away with batteries completely, despite the scientists' optimism.

"You still need to provide power for the sensors, for the data-logging system and for the satellite communications system to get the data back," he said. Meaning, essentially, that the vehicle would have to return to a ship (or to shore) every so often to recharge its batteries.

"It's always a trade-off between the power used for the propulsion system and the power used for the sensors," said McPhail.

Something we can all relate to, certainly.

From BBC

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Tags: breaking+news, Future Tech, FutureTech, top

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