iRobot Seaglider Wanders Oceans, Listening For Whale Songs

Writing by Evan Ackerman on Tuesday, 17 of November , 2009 at 12:24 am

For some reason, the idea of iRobot’s (and UW’s) little Seaglider robot wandering around the oceans, listening for whale songs, completely captures my imagination. Seaglider is looking for beaked whales in particular, since they’re rare and very hard to track. Also, they react especially badly to US Navy sonar tests, which may have killed dozens of them. Seaglider’s mission is to record beaked whale songs off the coast of Hawaii to try to determine where the whales live and how to track them. Unlike their larger cousins, beaked whales make higher pitched noises that don’t carry as far in the water as, say, a humpback whale song, which makes them harder to find.

The Office of Naval Research has contributed $1.5 million to this project, which so far just involves one single Seaglider operating for about 20 days. The Seaglider itself is 1 meter long and is capable of operating autonomously for up to 10 months without needing to recharge its batteries. It has a range of 4600 km, or 650 dives to its maximum depth of 1000 meters. It can be programmed ahead of time, and every once in a while it’ll pop up to the surface and stick out a satellite antenna for further instructions. Ideally, a whole fleet of Seagliders would cooperate to keep tabs on the whales, but at the moment, researchers are hoping to use existing Navy hydrophones to help them figure out where to send the Seaglider.

[ iRobot Seaglider ] VIA [ Wired ]

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Category: Research

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