Ocean sampling and surveillance using autonomous sailboats

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss some of the potential applications of small scale autonomous sailboats. The use of autonomous sailboats for ocean sampling has been tentatively proposed before, but there have been minor efforts towards the development and deployment of actual prototypes, due to a number of technical limitations and significant risks of operation. We show that, currently, most of the limitations have been surpassed, with the existing availability of extremely low power electronics, flexible computational systems and high performance renewable power sources. At the same time, some of the major risks have been mitigated, allowing this emerging technology to become an effective tool for a wide range of applications in real scenarios. We illustrate some of these scenarios and we describe the status of the current efforts being made to develop operational prototypes, with some promising results already being achieved.