Boeing [BA] and Liquid Robotics Tuesday signed a global, multi-year teaming agreement to collaborate on product development, maritime services and operational deployments.
The initial focus of the collaboration will be to develop totally integrated solutions for anti-submarine warfare, maritime domain awareness and other maritime defense applications.
Image: Liquid Robotics
“It’s a great opportunity to partner with Liquid Robotics to provide new and existing customers a unique portfolio of defense solutions and capabilities,” said Chris Chadwick, president and CEO of Boeing Defense, Space & Security. “This relationship allows the Boeing-Liquid Robotics team to solve maritime security and surveillance challenges in entirely new and highly effective ways and provides unprecedented capability and value to customers worldwide.”
The agreement combines Boeing Defense, Space & Security’s experience developing and fielding multi-layered intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance solutions with Liquid Robotics’ award-winning autonomous ocean technology.
“We look forward to teaming with Boeing to expand domestic and international opportunities that combine Boeing’s expertise in aircraft systems and integrated defense solutions with Liquid Robotics’ expertise in persistent unmanned ocean vehicles,” said Gary Gysin, president and CEO of Liquid Robotics. “Together, Boeing and Liquid Robotics will provide customers an integrated, seafloor-to-space capability for long duration maritime defense.”
Liquid Robotics is an ocean drone manufacturer with a goal of instrumenting the ocean with fleets of networked, naturally powered robots carrying sensor payloads.
The company’s Wave Glider technology converts wave motion to propulsion, according to Liquid Robotics’ website. Wave motion is greatest at the water’s surface and decreases rapidly with increasing depth. Wave Glider’s unique two-part architecture exploits this difference in motion to provide forward propulsion.
Wave Glider SV2 adds a hybrid power and propulsion system that uses both wave-powered and stored solar energy to navigate the variety of ocean conditions. The Wave Glider SV3 auxiliary vectored thruster is used for extra speed to address difficult ocean conditions, or to quickly accommodate changes in mission operations.