Intelligent.
Indestructible.
And with no humans on board,
these sail boats are plotting
their own course through the waters of San Francisco Bay.
If this guy gets his way,
soon there will be hundreds of them
trawling the ocean for data.
(electronic music)
This is Richard Jenkins.
And he's someone who likes a challenge.
Here he is trying to break the world record
for land sailing in 2009.
I registered at 116 miles an hour,
which I thought was kind of a low bar
and I could do it in maybe a year
and it was actually anything but easy.
Instead of one year, it took Jenkins
a decade of toiling in deserts around the world.
But break the record he did,
clocking just over 126 miles per hour
in his own custom designed vehicle.
The next challenge was a nod to Magellan
with a modern twist.
It encouraged me that nothing has ever gone
around the world unmanned and it's kind of the last
great records to get.
So Jenkins set out to build a robotic sailboat
capable of circumnavigating the globe.
In 2013, he sent the world's first unmanned vessel
across an ocean, going from San Francisco to Hawaii.
We actually called it the Honey Badger
because, you know, it doesn't give a shit,
it just plows through anything.
And somewhere, amidst all that,
he found the time to start a new business.
Based in this former aircraft hangar, in Alameda, California
Jenkin's company Saildrone has already raised
90 million dollars from investors.
And here's what's got those venture capitalists so excited.
A 20 strong fleet of autonomous sea-worthy drones.
Who put the shark faces on them?
That was me, last weekend, I just freehanded that.
Powered only by the wind and sun,
these GPS guided bots can survive
at sea for months at a time.
Bristling with sensors, scientific equipment,
and cameras, they beam back real time data
and images via satellite from the ocean surface.
These two vehicles are on their way back from
a seven, almost eight month voyage.
Probably 10 thousand miles.
Where did they go?
Down to the Equatorial Pacific,
studying El Nino affects on the equator.
Right.
You wanna know what it looks like?
Is this the camera view?
Yes, this is a real time camera view.
And there it is, that's a picture from
Equatorial Pacific right now.
It's nice and sunny.
It's always sunny.
It's always sunny down there.
Right now, Saildrone is busy
prepping for a new mission.
The 2000 mile round trip to an area of Pacific Ocean
known as the white shark cafe.
Great White's come to this remote spot to hang out
for months at a time and scientists have spent decades
wanting to know why.
So we're working with Stanford University
to take these vehicles and literally follow the sharks
to the cafe to understand, literally,
what they're doing there.
Is it food, is it reproduction?
No one really knows.
The drones are ideal for missions like this.
They're much cheaper than large research ships
and can collect many different types of data.
PH, chlorophyll, humidity, radiation,
wind speed, direction, temperature,
the list goes on.
We measure everything you could possibly measure
near the surface of the ocean.
And data like this sheds light
on something that affects everyone.
The weather.
There really is infinite use for
more accurate weather and climate data.
So a big focus for us this year is deploying drones
into the hurricane field so we can find out how strong
they're going to be and where they're going to land.
And the impacts of that information is huge.
So for insurance risk, financial markets,
and for people's safety.
On an unmanned craft, hurricane force winds
would shred a conventional sail.
So instead, the drones harness the wind using the hard
vertical wing adapted from Jenkins' land sailing days.
When wind passes over an airplane wing, it produces lift.
In this case, the wind produces thrust that moves
the sail drone forward.
Jenkins invented a tail, with a small adjustable tab
to control this force.
It stops the wing from spinning out of control
and lets the robot make snap sailing decisions.
Everything about the craft is 100 percent
salt-water proof and submersible.
Today I'm hitching a ride to see Rich deploy
two of his drones to the white shark cafe.
There's not much wind so they're given a tow
into San Francisco Bay before being released.
There's enough wind here now we can start sailing.
We just left the city and this is where
we normally let them go.
Goodbye drone.
As soon as their released, they're on full autonomous mode.
You guys have gone 200 thousand nautical miles
without an incident?
Yep, we've had the drones operating for four years now.
And not a single scratch on the vehicle.
And nobody's every phoned it in as a, like a UFO
or some sailor's like what the hell are these things
doing out in the water?
No, they behave really predictably
and safely around ships.
And there are animals that come up and check them out?
Yep.
We got some really good pictures.
So, there's a spotted fur seal, jumped on for a ride
up in the Chukchi sea about 65 degrees north,
and hung out there for about six hours.
(electronic bubbly music)
These drones have a two week journey ahead of them
before they make their shark rendezvous
and soon, they'll be part of an even bigger fleet.
I want to get a thousand drones
within three to four years.
And that gives us full global coverage
so we have as much or better data of oceans
that we currently have for land
and that will transform our understanding of our planet.
(electronic fading out)