Sir Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos (I’m sure I don’t need to introduce them), have both famously created their own private rockets, allowing people to explore space and who knew, make space tourism a thing. The inspiration? In 2004 suborbital spaceflight award XPRIZE re-inspired space exploration, by challenging teams to build private spaceships with a $10million dollar prize. The real success came from the next $100 million investment in new technologies specifically in pursuit of the prize which provided the platform for the personal spaceflight industry (enter Sir Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos idea).
But XPRIZE aren’t just interested in the mysterious creatures above they’re also interested in the exploration of the ocean. And no wonder, with more than 80% of the ocean still “alien”, the potential to attract investments from the outside sector that could create significant results in areal and meaningful way are abundant.
The Director of the Ocean Discovery XPRIZE, Jyotike Virmani, Ph.D. said
“Our vision is that these new technologies will enable the discovery of new ocean species, underwater resources, geological features and safer methods of exploring the deep sea, while illuminating the mysteries of the deep and discovering what has remained unknown since the dawn of time.”
This is exactly what SEA-KIT International did. Their solution to create a surface vessel and software platform that can operate with different autonomous underwater vessels, using SEALL’s specifically designed control interface, not only proved extremely innovative in its field but also greatly supported the learning and providing of data to better understand our oceans. Which is probably why they won!
So, how does this cutting-edge technology measure up against XPRIZE foundation’s mission to bring about radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity? Well aside from the uniquely flexible design of the Sea Kit vessels, which are highly configurable and multi mission compatible; their efficiency in means of CO2 reduction are quite frankly futuristic. These surface vessels, boast hybrid drive for low emissions, low fuel consumptions and have solar and wind chargeable capabilities.
Their vessels are completely remote controlled providing a significant reduced risk to personnel and have no single point of failure.Their exceptional approach not only benefits luxury and commercial shipping industries but also the defence and security sector through their over-the-horizon deployment of systems and sensors for numerous mission types, including naval operations and the security and monitoring of coastal offshore assets.
Delivering the uniquely developed control system to SEA-KIT International that made this a reality was a brilliant experience for us, as we constantly strive to work with visionaries of the marine industry to promote and sustain an innovative future. If you have a vision, we want to be the technological partner to get you there. Drop us an email. 👽
