Liquid Robotics® yesterday announced the introduction of the Wave Glider® SV3, the world’s first hybrid wave and solar propelled unmanned ocean robot.

The Wave Glider SV3 incorporates the latest advancements in energy harvesting technology providing the ability to utilize both wave and solar energy for forward propulsion. These innovative propulsion and energy systems will help customers explore portions of the world’s oceans in conditions that previously were too challenging or costly to operate. Customers will now have the ability to conduct missions, 24×7, through all weather conditions, across most of the planet to help solve some of the world’s critical problems such as global climate change, ocean acidification, fisheries management, hurricane prediction, tsunami warning and exploration for valuable natural resources. The end-to-end ocean data solution provided by Liquid Robotics’ new integrated platform provides ocean data collection and processing at the point of collection with real-time delivery of critical information to shore. The Wave Glider SV3 can tap into the inexhaustible supply of the planet’s wave and solar energy, travel tens of thousands of miles, collect data in the most demanding sea states/conditions (doldrums, high currents, hurricanes/cyclones) and deliver this data in real-time to users around the globe. This capability provides access to new levels of ocean data, more pervasively and more cost effectively than from existing alternatives.

“The SV3 is a tremendous step forward in terms of what we can accomplish in the ocean and gives customers a competitive advantage to capture data in the most challenging ocean conditions,” said Bill Vass, CEO, Liquid Robotics. “By providing the ability to deploy Wave Gliders across most of the planet and deliver ocean data in a new and cost-effective way, we’re enabling broad access to affordable ocean exploration.”

The Wave Glider SV3 leverages the basic design principle of the highly successful Wave Glider SV2 platform, which was introduced in 2009, and has since traveled more than 300,000 nautical miles globally, set a world record for longest distance traveled by an autonomous vehicle (land or sea), and has been deployed on hundreds of customer missions ranging from the Arctic to Australia, and from the Canary Islands to Loch Ness.

Additional technological advancements introduced in the Wave Glider SV3 are datacenter@sea, adaptable power and storage providing support for power hungry sensors and the introduction of a new, adaptable operating system designed for intelligent autonomy for fleet operations.

“The SV3 enables unparalleled, pervasive collection of data and processing of data,” said Roger Hine, CTO and inventor of the Wave Glider. “Riding the advancements in consumer electronics, smart phone, tablet computing and a new generation of extremely capable processors, we are now able to provide processing onboard — actually as powerful as a supercomputer from not long ago. With that computational power and the ability to tirelessly swim across vast oceans, the Wave Glider SV3 represents a big step forward in the state-of-the-art of unmanned monitoring and exploration.”

Press Release, April 9, 2013