Tech Life Sailing into stormy seas
Sep 9, 2025
In this discussion, Alistair Keane, a tech reporter at IFA in Germany, reveals groundbreaking advancements in hurricane forecasting. He explains how small robotic sailboats collect vital data to help predict storm paths, enhancing safety for communities. The conversation also highlights a Zambian robotics club fostering youth engagement in tech education and innovative solar battery solutions promoting clean energy access in Africa. Keane spotlights the next wave of consumer tech, emphasizing AI-driven home appliances unveiled at the major tech show.
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Small Robots Create Wide Storm Coverage
- Ocean's one-metre SeaStar robots form a picket-line to sample storms across a wide area.
- Distributed, low-cost units can capture spatial hurricane data that single large platforms cannot.
Measuring The Ocean Fuel For Hurricanes
- SeaStars measure air-sea flux to estimate how much energy the ocean supplies to a hurricane.
- Understanding this fuel flow helps predict hurricane intensity and behaviour more accurately.
Miniaturisation Enables Scaleable Ocean Sensing
- Miniaturisation and lower power allow hundreds of storm-capable robots to be fielded.
- SeaStars' small size and storm survivability let Ocean scale coverage where larger platforms couldn't.