Liquid Robotics

Liquid Robotics, Inc.

Type	Private
Founded	2007
Headquarters	Sunnyvale, CA; Kamuela, HI.
Key people	CEO: Gary Gysin CFO: Pablo Luther CTO & Founder: Roger Hine Chief Software Architect: James Gosling
Products	Wave Glider, SHARC
Number of employees	120+
Website	www.liquid-robotics.com

CEO: Gary Gysin CFO: Pablo Luther CTO & Founder: Roger Hine

Liquid Robotics, a Boeing Company is an American company headquartered in Sunnyvale, California that designs, manufactures, and sells an unmanned surface vehicle (USV) called the Wave Glider. The Wave Glider is the world’s first ocean robot (or USV) to be powered 100% by wave and solar energy.

The Wave Glider has revolutionized how the ocean is explored and understood by gathering data in ways and locations previously too costly or challenging to operate. With their global partner ecosystem, the Wave Glider addresses challenges facing defense, commercial, and science customers by making ocean data collection and communications easier, safer, and real-time. Solution areas include: anti-submarine warfare, surface vessel detection, illegal fishing, drug/human trafficking, Marine Protected Areas (MPA) monitoring, seismic surveying, and various application areas for environmental assessment (weather forecasting, climate change, water quality monitoring).

In 2003 with a kayak, hydrophone, and a pickle jar, Joe Rizzi, Founder and Chairman of the Jupiter Research Foundation, embarked on a project to record the songs or “singing” of Humpback Whales as they migrated along the coasts of the Big Island of Hawai’i. In 2005, after many experiments, Joe enlisted Derek Hine and his son, Roger Hine, a mechanical engineer and robotics expert from Stanford University, to help create “an unmoored, station-keeping data buoy” that could stay at sea for months, collect and transmit acoustic data while not harming the environment. Together, they came up with a non-motorized model that harnessed the natural energy in waves for forward propulsion and solar energy to power the hydrophone and communications equipment This breakthrough occurred and produced the first Wave Glider. In January 2007, recognizing the commercial potential for the technology, Liquid Robotics was founded with Roger Hine as the founding CEO.

The Wave Glider is composed of two parts: the float is roughly the size and shape of a surfboard and stays at the surface; the sub has wings and hangs 6 meters below on an umbilical tether. Because of the separation, the float experiences more wave motion than does the sub. This difference allows wave energy to be harvested to produce forward thrust.

Over the next several years, Liquid Robotics conducted long duration endurance missions beginning with a nine-day circumnavigation of Hawaii's Big Island. Later that year a pair of Wave Gliders traveled from Hawaii to San Diego, an 82-day trip that covered more than 2,500 miles. In 2009, commenced manufacturing operations and began customer shipments. Since that time, Liquid Robotics has produced and deployed Wave Gliders around the globe from NOAA PMEL missions in the Arctic to Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) Antarctica mission in the Southern Ocean.