How a fleet of wind-powered drones is changing our understanding of the ocean

We know more about
other planets than our own,

and today, I want to show you
a new type of robot

designed to help us better understand

our own planet.

It belongs to a category

known in the oceanographic community
as an unmanned surface vehicle, or USV,

and it uses no fuel.

Instead, it relies
on wind power for propulsion,

and yet it can sail around the globe

for months at a time.

So I want to share with you
why we built it,

and what it means for you.

A few years ago, I was on a sailboat
making its way across the Pacific,

from San Francisco to Hawaii.

I had just spent the past 10 years

working nonstop developing video games
for hundreds of millions of users,

and I wanted to take a step back
and look at the big picture

and get some much-needed thinking time.

I was the navigator on board,

and one evening, after a long session
analyzing weather data

and plotting our course,

I came up on deck and saw
this beautiful sunset,

and a thought occurred to me;

how much do we really
know about our oceans?

The Pacific was stretching all around me
as far as the eye could see,

and the waves were
rocking our boat forcefully,

a sort of constant reminder
of its untold power.

How much do we really
know about our oceans?

I decided to find out.

What I quickly learned
is that we don't know very much,

and the first reason is just
how vast oceans are,

covering 70 percent of the planet,

and yet we know they drive
complex planetary systems

like global weather,

which affect all of us on a daily basis,

sometimes dramatically.

And yet, those activities
are mostly invisible to us.

Ocean data is scarce by any standards.

Back on land, I had grown used
to accessing lots of sensors,

billions of them actually,

but at sea, in situ data
is scarce and expensive.

Why? Because it relies
on a small number of ships and buoys.

How small a number
was actually a great surprise.

Our National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration,

better known as NOAH,

only has 16 ships

and there are less than
200 buoys offshore globally.

It is easy to understand why.

The oceans are an unforgiving place,

and to collect in situ data,
you need a big ship

capable of carrying a vast amount of fuel

and large crews,

costing hundreds
of millions of dollars each,

or big buoys tethered to the ocean floor
with a four-mile-long cable

and waited down by a set of train wheels

which is both dangerous to deploy
and expensive to maintain.

What about satellites, you might ask?

Well, satellites are fantastic,

and they have taught us
so much about the big picture

over the past few decades.

However, the problem with satellites

is they can only see through one micron

of the surface of the ocean.

They have relatively poor
spatial and temporal resolution,

and their signal needs to be corrected

for cloud cover and land effects
and other factors.

So what is going on in the oceans?

And what are we trying to measure?