deepglider1_f.jpg

Wired News writes about a new underwater glider at the University of Washington that can dive three times deeper than existing gliders.

“Reaching a depth of 2,700 meters [nearly 9,000 feet] is quite a feat and promises to extend the nature and type of missions that can be carried out by gliders,” Wired News quotes Naomi Ehrich Leonard as saying. “You could even imagine a heterogeneous fleet of gliders working in tandem at different depths to explore this otherwise impenetrable undersea.”

Leonard, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton, just completed a field experiment in Monterey Bay, Calif. in August during which an entire fleet of undersea robots for the first time worked together without the aid of humans to carefully observe the ocean.

You can plumb the depths of Leonard’s research here. See the full Wired News story for more on the University of Washington’s Deepglider.

Photo courtesy of Charlie Eriksen, University of Washington