Robotic sailboats set sail to improve hurricane forecasting

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), The University of Southern Mississippi and UK-based robotics company, Oshen, are making waves in hurricane research and forecasting.

Oshen's C-Stars are the newest type of “uncrewed surface vehicles” (USVs) to sail through hurricanes, sending back data in real-time. These autonomous ocean robots are only four feet long, a sixth of the size of other USVs, and can be strategically and rapidly deployed ahead of a hurricane.

“The more accurately we can predict how bad a hurricane is going to be and where it’s going to make landfall, the more lives you’re going to save, the more people you can put out the right warnings to,” explained Oshen CEO and Cofounder Anahita Laverack.

This is the first season NOAA and Oshen have partnered, deploying seven C-Stars so far, including two ahead of Hurricane Imelda off North Carolina’s coastline.

“Instead of keeping tons of observations out there, you can reactively have these C-Stars sitting in a pickup truck. They get driven around and chucked into the most important area. So, when it was looking like Imelda was going to make landfall, two C-Stars were immediately sent to North Carolina and deployed,” explained Laverack.

University of Southern Mississippi scientists deploy the relatively light and maneuverable C-Stars where they are needed most, and plan to move the two off North Carolina’s coast to the Gulf coast next week to gather data should other systems develop.

Ocean and weather sensors on board collect and transmit information to NOAA and the National Hurricane Center in real-time, helping forecasters know what a storm is doing in that moment. But, the extensive data will also help forecasters better predict and understand rapid intensification cycles, arguably the hardest part of hurricane forecasting.

“Something that C-Star is very good at, because they’re sitting at that interface, is measuring energy coming from the ocean and entering the atmosphere. So, that data is going to be used by NOAA scientists to hopefully study that kind of heat exchange and help improve how we predict rapid intensification," said Laverack.

The goal is to ultimately have a constellation of these robotic sailboats exploring the high seas and chasing hurricanes in seasons to come, improving forecasts and our understanding of how they intensify.