IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - June 2013 - 25

The Wave Glider-How It
Began and How It Works
Born on the Big Island
San Francisco
of Hawaii
Launch:
The Wave Glider began out of one
11/17/2011
man's passion for whale songs. Joe
Rizzi, a successful venture capitalist
and chair of the Jupiter Research
Foundation, had a love for the
songs of humpback whales as they
migrated along the coasts of Hawaii
to Alaska. He wanted to capture
their songs live and pipe their music
Bundaberg
into his beachfront home; not an
02/14/2013
easy task considering the elements.
9442 NM
He decided to include a family
friend, Derek Hine, and Derek's son
Roger Hine, both highly accomplished aerospace/mechanical engineers, for assistance. They were Figure 1. The journey: The PacX Challenge route. Four Liquid Robotics Wave Gliders
swam from San Francisco Bay, California, through the Great Barrier Reef to Bundaberg,
tasked with developing an Queensland, Australia setting a new world record for the longest distance traveled by an
unmoored, station-keeping data autonomous surface vehicle.
buoy. Roger's response was "How
about a floating surfboard powered by a fin 20 ft below the
water?" Thus, a great adventure began.
Float
Together they invented and patented a way to harvest
energy from ocean waves to provide essentially limitless
propulsion. This revolutionary invention produced the
7m
Liquid Robotics Wave Glider, the world's first wave-powered, autonomous marine robot that requires no fuel and
no personnel and produces no emissions.
How It Works
The Wave Glider is composed of two parts: the float (surfboard size), and a submarine with wings. Connected by a 6-m
tether, the float is on the surface of the ocean where conditions are the harshest, with the submarine below the surface
(Figure 2). The separation between the surface float and the
submarine allows for the harvesting of wave energy and
transforms it into forward thrust. It is equipped with sophisticated computers for navigation and payload control, satellite
communication systems, and state-of-the-art ocean sensors to
measure the environment around it.
Operating 100% on renewable energies, wave and solar
power, Wave Gliders are able to persistently gather and communicate ocean data on a far broader scale and with greater
timeliness than ever before possible. It is no longer necessary
to expose people to the risks, hardships, and expense of
deep-ocean operations. Currently, long endurance missions
lasting months/years at a time are possible with 24 # 7 # 365
real-time communications of ocean data.
The Journey Begins
The idea for the PacX adventure was to help ignite interest in
ocean science while testing the ruggedness and endurance of

Submarine
Figure 2. How the Wave Glider works. With the up and down
motion of the ocean waves, the Wave Glider transforms this
energy into forward thrust.

the autonomous ocean robot, the Wave Glider. Bill Vass,
CEO of Liquid Robotics, challenged his team to successfully
send four Wave Gliders across the Pacific, transmit their
data in real time, and provide all the data free to the world.
Based on this challenge, the Liquid Robotics Engineering,
Manufacturing, Marine Operations, and Piloting teams set
off to meet and exceed this goal. Their plan was to launch
four Wave Gliders from San Francisco, California, stop for a
short evaluation at the company's Engineering and Test
Facility in Hawaii, and then separate, with two Wave Gliders
bound for Australia and two for Japan. The mission would
be the longest distance ever attempted by an unmanned
ocean vehicle and would take over a year to complete. The
risks were high, yet they were confident in the technology.
After creating the PacX Challenge, Liquid Robotics
enlisted partners and supporters to assist with this adventure.
Virgin Oceanic, Google, BP, the Ocean Exchange, and Turner
Instruments were all keenly interested in advancing ocean
june 2013

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - June 2013