Saildrone

Saildrone is a California-based company that designs, manufactures, and operates unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) for real-time ocean mapping and ocean data. Saildrone combines its patented wind-powered propulsion technology and solar-powered meteorological and oceanographic sensors. This is supported by a machine-learning-powered marine identification system to carry out autonomous long-range ocean data collection at scale.

The company has developed three products: Saildrone Explorer , Saildrone Voyager , and Saildrone Surveyor . Saildrone Explorer claims to be the only USVs capable of conducting renewable energy-powered ocean mapping operations for up to 12 months at depths of up to 100 m. Surveyor-class vehicles deliver bathymetry data to a depth of 33,000 ft (11,000 m) and its Voyager-class vehicles are equipped for near-short ocean mapping to depths of 900 ft (300 m). As of August 2023, Saildrone USVs have sailed over one million nautical miles and spent nearly 25,000 days at sea. In November 2023, Saildrone received the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) classification for Saildrone Voyager.

Key customers and partnerships

In April 2023, Saildrone partnered with Seabed 2030, a collaborative project between The Nippon Foundation and The General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans, to efficiently collect ocean mapping data and support solutions for ocean mapping and bathymetric data management. In March 2022, the company partnered with Sulmara to deploy and operate 10 Saildrone Voyagers. In October 2023, the company partnered with and Bat Conservation International, an organization dedicated to ending bat extinction, to evaluate the viability of Saildrone technology for bat research and assessment. In December 2023, The University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, in partnership with Saildrone completed a survey of near-shore ocean water quality around the main Hawaiian Islands using Saildrone Explorers.

The company also partnered with and provided insights to many private, government, and scientific organizations, including NASA, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, US Defense Innovation Unit, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, NOAA Climate Observations and Monitoring, and over thirty others.

In April 2024, Saildrone partnered with Thales Australia to integrate the Thales BlueSentry thin-line towed array with Saildrone Surveyor-class uncrewed surface vehicles (USVs) for autonomous anti-submarine warfare (ASW) missions.