Liquid Robotics®, an ocean data services provider and developer of the Wave Glider®, the first wave-powered marine robot, today announced that James Gosling, formerly of Google, has joined the company as chief software architect. The addition of Gosling comes at a time when the company is experiencing rapid growth in its customer base, adding strategic new hires, and expanding company operations.
In June, Liquid Robotics closed a Series D $22 million financing round led by VantagePoint Capital Partners, the company’s first institutional investor, together with participation by oilfield services provider Schlumberger.
“Liquid Robotics tackles a rocket science problem that does good for the world and is incurably cool,” said James Gosling. “Liquid Robotics can totally change the way we look at oceans. We’ll be able to get a wide variety of detailed data more cheaply and pervasively than any other way. It involves a large data problem and a large-scale control problem, both of which are fascinating to me and have been passions of mine for years.” Gosling is best known as the developer of the Java programming language.
The Wave Glider is the world’s first self-propelled marine robotic drone employing a multi-patented design that taps into the ocean’s inexhaustible supply of wave energy to “swim” indefinitely (no refueling, no emissions, no manpower). It can collect and transmit worldwide oceanic data in real-time on a continuous basis on missions that can last years and cover thousands of miles. Previous robotic ocean platforms spend the majority of their power on propulsion, yet the Wave Glider gets its propulsion directly from wave energy, thus all of its power can be dedicated to sensing and significant computation. In addition to providing Wave Gliders as a product, Liquid Robotics has also set up a Data-as-a-Service cloud that provides direct, real-time access to ocean information.
“Liquid Robotics is changing the economics of ocean operations. As we move to provide integrated data services using autonomous fleets of seafaring robots to explore the world’s vast oceans, software is critical to unlocking the potential of what is possible,” said Bill Vass, Liquid Robotics’ CEO. “James is one of the best software engineers in the industry and will help us revolutionize global oceanic knowledge on a scale and dimension unknown in history.”
Currently in long-term, rigorous deployment around the globe, Wave Gliders are being used for scientific research by the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration’s National Data Buoy Center and Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, as well as several premier oceanographic facilities such as the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of Hawaii. The craft are also being deployed for commercial operations such as in offshore oil and gas exploration, and for a variety of government and defense uses.
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Liquid Robotics is an ocean data services provider and developer of the Wave Glider®, the world’s first wave powered, autonomous marine robot designed to help address the biggest challenges the world faces, including global climate change, national security, hurricane and tsunami warning, and offshore energy and resource management. For more information, visit www.liquidr.com.
Liquid Robotics and Wave Glider are registered trademarks of Liquid Robotics, Inc., in the United States and other countries.