We’re building a fleet of autonomous sailing robots to study the oceans. Each boat can sail itself anywhere & send data back to shore.
WHAT IS THIS ANYWAY
We’re asking for your help to produce and test the ROBOTBOAT MARK VI. Each robotboat is fully autonomous, needs no fuel, and will bring to bear myriad sensors at remote points on the surface of oceans, lakes, and rivers. Think of it as a satellite for the seas.
WHY
We need lots of low-cost self-propelled robots to study the health of the world’s water. Never send a person to do a buoy’s job! The real value of this technology lies at the fleet level, but given the extremely high performance required of each boat, purchasing even a few of them is simply beyond our means. Building one boat represents a huge step towards cheap data. Building more than one boat will allow us to test swarming algorithms, implement complex communication schemes, and take greater risks (e.g. undertake longer, more challenging missions).
Bringing this opportunity to the kickstarter community will allow us to develop this technology MUCH FASTER than we could if we have to fund it ourselves; the more resources we can raise here, the faster we can deliver.
WHY SHOULD I CARE
Perhaps Lilly Tomlin said it best: “I said ‘Somebody should do something about that.’ Then I realized I am somebody.”
No matter where you stand on issues like climate change, marine conservation, offshore energy production etc., we hope you’ll agree thateveryone is better served by policies and behavior based on empirical scientific evidence. We should all care about how we manage our water resources.
We think Robotboat is the best way yet to generate information about the world’s oceans.
*More data = better ocean management
*Fully automatic = cheap to acquire data
*Fast = station-keep in high seas; get to points of interest quickly
*Durable = collect longitudinal data; self-righting
*Each boat = millions upon millions of datapoints
WHO ARE YOU
Walt, Rob, TJ, and Eamon… Hi.
We’re a professional engineering team. Between us we hold 8 patents and have over fifty years of engineering experience.
Our principals (Walt & Rob respectively) founded these companies:
Planetary Systems Corp. and Tiger Innovations
TJ and Eamon have worked for Walt making satellite subsystems for the last few years (among other pursuits). We’ve designed and executed dozens of successful missions. We’ve produced space flight hardware, ground station equipment, and remote sensing systems for the most demanding customers in the world, Collectively, our expertise is in developing robust mechatronics.
HOW ARE YOU GOING TO PULL THIS OFF
We’ve built & tested 5 autonomous sailing robots over the last several years.
Planetary Systems Corp. Og Tiger Innovations –
FiskerForum.com
