无人机潜入深海

    就数据（也就是可以利用的、可能产生经济效益的数据）而言，世界上的海洋有点像黑洞。我们知道数据就在那里，但我们无法在水平线上看到。我们不知道，从这个时刻到下一个时刻，海洋里的任何一个地方在发生什么事情。海洋拥有重要的食物来源，丰富的能源储备、关键的航道和推动全球气候的引擎，但流回海岸的有用信息是如此之少，以至于除了单纯的学术研究以外，它们无法用于任何目的。

    “你知道吗？如今在海洋里，通常像加州那么大的地方才有一个传感器，”Liquid Robotics公司CEO比尔•瓦斯说。他把这种情况比喻成站在死谷里，试图依靠几百英里外的温度计来弄清楚本地温度。他以这句话结束了上述比喻：“你可能觉得没有58度，但温度计却告诉你有这么高，因为温度计在旧金山。”

    这种数据的匮乏使Liquid Robotics公司处于真正独一无二的地位。它的“波浪滑翔机”（Wave Glider）机器人适于航海，满载各种传感器，形如冲浪板，利用新奇的推进系统把海浪的运动转换成向前行驶的动力，从而创造出了一种不需要添加燃料、只需极少维护的自控系统，只要海浪继续运动就行。Liquid Robotics公司已经在去年12月证明了这一点。当时，这家公司的一个“波浪滑翔机”（一年前从旧金山出发）抵达澳大利亚布里斯班，自主完成了9,000英里的跨太平洋航行。去年10月，美国国家海洋和大气管理局（NOAA）的一个“波浪滑翔机”从桑迪飓风的中心穿过，再次证明了它的耐用性。最新版的“波浪滑翔机”已于本周在华盛顿特区附近的海军海空暨太空博物馆（Sea-Air-Space）发布，Liquid Robotics公司几乎已经从机器人制造商变成了世界上最引人瞩目的大数据公司之一。

    为什么呢？因为“波浪滑翔机”（Wave Glider）横跨太平洋之旅只是一段热身的旅程。Liquid Robotics公司已向美国海军以及美国国家海洋和大气管理局（NOAA）出售和租赁了它的机器人传感平台，但对于大多数应用——石油和天然气勘探、热带风暴跟踪与预测、渔业管理、海上威胁拦截——而言，客户真正需要的是数据，而不是机器人。“波浪滑翔机”可以提供规模达百万兆字节（TB）级别的数据。但是，全新的“波浪滑翔机SV3”处理数据以及与附近其他“波浪滑翔机”进行网络传输的速度都是按照TB级别进行的，基本上形成了一个横跨公海，而且信息丰富的云。

    其中的关键在于一个称为“天狮星”（Regulus）的独家开发而且基于云的操作系统（由Java之父詹姆斯•高斯林为Liquid Robotics公司设计）。这款操作系统使“波浪滑翔机SV3”能够表现出相当抢眼的自主程度，同时也保持一个开放源码的组成部分，从而可以快速部署新的传感器有效载荷和软件包，以及运行它们所需的迅速可替换软硬件。传感器载荷可以包括“波浪滑翔机SV3”七个模块化有效载荷单元有空间容纳的几乎任何东西：适用于海洋和气候科学的大气和海洋传感器，有助于国家安全和海洋环境保护目的的摄像机和声学传感器，或测绘和评估海底及海底下地理情况的仪器。由于基于云的软件架构，一些“波浪滑翔机SV3”可以携带所有这些传感器，而且在将部分数据处理任务转给附近充当中央数据中心的另一个“波浪滑翔机”时，还可以携带其他更多的传感器。

    Where data is concerned -- that is, where usable, potentially profitable data -- the world's oceans are somewhat akin to black holes: We know they are out there, but beyond what we can see at the horizon, we really have no idea what's happening in any one place from one moment to the next. The amount of useful information streaming back to shore from the world's oceans, home to critical food stocks, abundant energy reserves, vital shipping lanes, and the engine driving global climate, is so thin as to be meaningless for all but the most academic purposes.

    "Do you realize that in the ocean today there is often one sensor for an area the size of California?" says Liquid Robotics CEO Bill Vass. He likens this to standing in Death Valley and trying to determine the local temperature via a thermometer that is hundreds of miles away. "It may not feel like 58 degrees to you," he says, capping off the analogy. "But that's what your sensor says because your sensor is in San Francisco."

    This dearth of data places Liquid Robotics in a truly unique position. Its seaworthy, sensor-laden, surfboard-shaped Wave Glider robots use a novel propulsion system to convert the rolling motion of ocean waves into energy for forward thrust, creating a self-contained system that requires no refueling and very little maintenance as long as the ocean continues to move. The company proved this last December when one of its Wave Gliders -- launched from San Francisco a year prior -- arrived in Brisbane, Australia after autonomously completing a 9,000-mile trans-Pacific crossing. It proved its durability again when one of the NOAA's Wave Gliders traveled right through the center of Hurricane Sandy in October. But with the release of its latest iteration of Wave Glider this week at the Navy's Sea-Air-Space expo near Washington, D.C., Liquid Robotics has more or less completed a transition from robot manufacturer to one of the world's more interesting big data companies.

    Why? Because the Wave Glider's trip across the Pacific was little more than a warm-up lap. Liquid Robotics has previously sold and leased its robotic sensing platforms to the U.S. Navy and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, but for most applications -- oil and gas exploration, tropical storm tracking and prediction, fisheries management, maritime threat interdiction -- data, rather than a robot, is what the customer really wants. Wave Glider can provide data by the terabyte. But the brand new Wave Glider SV3 processes data by the terabyte and networks with other Wave Gliders in its vicinity, basically creating an information-rich cloud stretching across the high seas.

    Key to this is a proprietary cloud-based operating system called Regulus (designed for Liquid Robotics by Java creator James Gosling) that allows the SV3 to exhibit a fairly dazzling degree of autonomy while also maintaining an open source component that allows for rapid deployment of new sensor payloads and software packages as well as rapidly swappable software and hardware to run them. Sensor payloads can include virtually anything that fits in the SV3's seven modular payload units: atmospheric and oceanographic sensors applicable to ocean and climate science, video cameras and acoustic sensors useful for national security and marine environment protection purposes, or instruments for mapping and evaluating geography on the seafloor and below. And thanks to the cloud-based software architecture, some SV3s could carry all of these sensors and more while offloading some of the data processing to another nearby Wave Glider serving as a central data hub.