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Robots Brave Hurricane, Collect Vital Ocean Data
17 Jan
Summary
- Autonomous robots weathered a Category 5 hurricane, collecting crucial data.
- Oshen's C-Stars can operate for 100 days in swarms, gathering ocean information.
- A former sailor founded Oshen after realizing a lack of ocean data hindered challenges.
Anahita Laverack, initially aiming for aerospace engineering, pivoted to ocean exploration after a robotics challenge revealed a significant lack of ocean data. This realization spurred the founding of Oshen in April 2022, a company now specializing in fleets of autonomous robots, dubbed C-Stars, designed for extended ocean data collection. These C-Stars are built to endure harsh conditions for up to 100 days and are deployed in coordinated swarms.
Oshen's journey began unconventionally. Co-founders Laverack and Ciaran Dowds bootstrapped the company with their savings, using a 25-foot sailboat as their initial testing platform for two years. This hands-on approach allowed them to iterate on the robot technology, ensuring its durability across all seasons, even through challenging winter storms in the UK.
The company's technological advancements, particularly its ability to create mass-deployable, cost-effective, yet advanced robots, caught the attention of organizations like NOAA. Oshen's C-Stars recently proved their mettle by weathering Hurricane Humberto, with three robots collecting data throughout the storm, marking a historic achievement for ocean robotics.
