The ocean is essential to human livelihood, but oceanographers have not had sophisticated technology to understand its vastness. Building entirely on AWS infrastructure, Saildrone Inc. is gathering massive amounts of data to help organizations like tee National Aeronautics and Space Administration and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The company’s unique technology, known as “saildrones,” are devices that gather data points from unexplored and parts of the ocean that would be difficult to reach by humans. 

“[The] oxygen you breathe comes from the ocean,” said Sebastien de Halleux (pictured), chief operating officer of Saildrone. “It covers 70% of the planet; it drives the global weather; it drives precipitation. The fish provide a major protein source. So, you know, it’s a very, very important survival system for all of us on land.”

De Halleux, spoke with Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and John Walls (@JohnWalls21), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas. They discussed Saildrone’s technology: how it works, what makes it so innovative, and how AWS infrastructure supports its data collection and analysis. (* Disclosure below). 

[Editor’s note: Some parts of this article have been lightly edited for clarity.]

How Saildrone’s technology works

Saildrone describes its work as “painting with sound.” Technology to take a broad picture of expansive land is straight forward; you can capture an image from an airplane or satellite. But light does not travel through water as effectively.

“So we use sound instead of light with the same principle. We send pulses of sound down through our ocean drones (saildrones), and the echo we listen to from the seabed, or from fish or creatures in the water column,” de Halleux said.

Once data is gathered from a saildrone, machine learning is used to transform the data into “statistical biomass distribution, for example, or 3D image of the seabed after processing the sound data,” de Halleux added.

The saildrones are entirely powered by wind and solar energy. These natural energy sources enable saildrones to leave the dock on their own and sail around the world for up to a year. Then, they return to the same dock.

“They harvest all of the energy from the environment, including wind for propulsion. Then sunlight and hydro-generation provides electricity, which powers the onboard computers, sensors, and the satellite link,” de Halleux stated.

This environmentally friendly process requires no engine or carbon emissions.

AWS is the main energy source for Saildrone

Perhaps another source of energy, and ally, for Saildrone is AWS. “It is really an AWS-powered solution because the drones themselves have a low level of autonomy,” de Halleux said.

Essentially, the only thing the drones know how to do is to go from point A to point B while taking wave, current, and wind into consideration. The intelligence to make the drone’s data collection efficient happens shoreside.

“So shoreside we crunch huge amounts of data sets — like numerical models that describe pressure field, wind, wave and current. We crunch this data, we optimize the route [for the drones], then we send those instructions via satellite to the vehicle, which will follow the mission plan,” de Halleux shared.

The drone is then equipped to collect one data point every second, from 25 different sensors. Next it sends data via satellite to the cloud, where it’s crunched and used for products like simple or extreme weather predictions.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the AWS re:Invent event. (* Disclosure: Saildrone Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Saildrone nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE