About This Project

Expanding the horizon of data collection at sea, our project aims to use innovative, small autonomous micro-vessels to detect wave profiles, facilitating low-cost, continuous wave monitoring. We will collect and compare our data with a surface following buoy to evaluate the viability of using autonomous wind-powered vessels, which exhibit non-wave induced motion, for sea wave monitoring.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

Wave profile measurements are crucial for enhancing our understanding of ocean dynamics, improving weather forecasting, studying climate patterns, and oceanographic research. This data benefits a range of applications, from marine safety and offshore operations to climate analysis and ecological research. Traditional methods like ship radars and moored buoys are costly and unreliable, while drifting buoys pose environmental concerns and lack persistence due to their rapid drift.

Our project offers a persistent, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly alternative: a small autonomous micro-vessel. With its compact size and modular design, it’s an ideal tool for scientists to conduct experiments, eliminating the need for shallow waters or expensive charters.

What is the significance of this project?

With a new approach, we aim to break down the financial barriers that often hinder wave monitoring. Our small autonomous micro-vessel not only reduce the costs associated, but also promotes a more sustainable method of data collection.

Given that our vessels exhibit non-wave induced motion from their interaction with the wind, this is a non-trivial problem. As a result, we will share our data, outcomes, and validation process with the scientific community, providing insights into the feasibility of using autonomous micro-vessels for wave monitoring. Future plans include leasing fleets of these vessels to scientists, thereby broadening access to this technology. We hope in the future that this opens up more groups to affordably collect wave data.

What are the goals of the project?

The objective of this project is to verify the effectiveness of our autonomous micro-vessel in accurately profiling waves. This entails incorporating a highly precise accelerometer to gather data, which will need to be iteratively processed and compared to data collected by a surface-following buoy. This comparison will demonstrate the effectiveness and reliability of collecting wave data from an autonomous vessel, whose motion is interfered by non-wave interactions.

Additionally, we will attach high-quality cameras to the vessel, which will give us valuable visual information on wind-over-tide conditions, wave alignment, and the general sea state (spray etc), contributing to a comprehensive wave profile dataset.