Just as important is the The ocean affects countless industries, but we lack the systematic knowledge we have about land. Syrenna has built a versatile robotic platform that appears to be a mobile weather observatory at sea, ready to emerge from stealth to enable precise real-time monitoring of Earth's largest liquid assets.
You might be surprised at how little we know about the ocean.certainly we know a lot general, trends and patterns across seasons and decades. But when it comes to that, detailwe have no idea what the temperature, salinity, or microplastic count is now two miles off the coast of Barcelona and at a depth of 20 meters.
This is partially due to the simple fact that the ocean is huge and there is simply no way (or need) to monitor it all. But even fishing, oil and gas, tourism, and other areas critical to the maritime industry are being inspected using labor-intensive or expensive methods, such as sending ships or robotic underwater vehicles. Cheaper solutions like buoys are great, but are limited to surface measurements and subject to the vagaries of weather and ocean currents.
Syrenna's solution combines several methods into one. The robot can control its depth while maintaining its geographic location, allowing it to permanently sense and track any number of critical ocean indicators in near real-time.
“There is a clear need for safe, reliable, and continuously updated water quality data,” said Ester Strommen, CEO and co-founder of Syrenna. She said: “The widespread use of technology will greatly increase our knowledge of how the ocean is doing. actually It can detect harmful bacteria, spills, and pollution, track global warming, monitor biological species, and conduct ocean floor monitoring. ”
If that last use case set off alarm bells, consider catching illegal fishing rather than invading privacy. The lack of real-time ocean information leads to illegal activities such as ocean dumping and poaching, the extent of which can currently only be estimated using satellite imagery.
free floating, free diving
Co-founder of Syrenna in the Oslo lab. From left: Becky Wightman, Mustafa Elkolari, Alex Alcocer, Esther Strommen. Image credits: Christian Carpagnano/Sirenna
Last spring, when I visited a startup in Oslo, where Syrenna is based, I saw a prototype called WaterDrone. This robot is based on Alcocer's research by early investor Alex who collaborated with other founders through his Antler Incubator program. (Parts of the robot are licensed from his OceanLab at Oslo Metropolitan University, where Alcocer first developed it.)
It is completely sealed against the water, except for the sensors that need to sample or observe the water, and incorporates a type of swim bladder that allows it to rise and fall to arbitrary depths. Meanwhile, its unique tether allows it to anchor close to its target point even in rough seas. What's more, it could simply sink to the ocean floor. The whole thing is powered by a battery that can operate for a full year, and the team is working to ensure that it can be recharged when it reaches the ground and transmits the latest data (via Iridium's satellite network).
Since my visit and seeing the WaterDrone in a small tank (about the size of a bedside table), Syrenna has completed the next version of the hardware and is collaborating with the Norwegian Institute for Marine Research to use it in the Oslo Fjord. I took it out for the actual pilot. NIVA and IMR. They conducted a second test in which they lowered the drone to a depth of 180 meters off the west coast of the country, and long-term tests in the field are also underway.
Some of these bots lurking in territorial waters and tax waters could provide a reliable and valuable flow of data to the interests of energy companies, from oil and gas to wind and thermal power generation. Governments are also interested, not only for law enforcement and military reasons, but also for basic research and awareness purposes.
Syrenna interface mockup. Image credits: Sirenna
The robot's final cost has not yet been determined, but Strommen said it will be a fraction of the cost of autonomous surface and underwater vehicles and the manned ships they need to deploy and maintain. clearly stated. Consider that over many years of active deployment, it will be on the order of hundreds of thousands. At this price, it's not far-fetched to think that countries would buy dozens or even a hundred WaterDrones to spray around ports and other bodies of water of interest.
The business model is very simple. People buy robots. There will probably be some more complicated arrangements, but this is what customers are used to today, Strommen said. There's no need for complex leasing or co-ownership schemes when customers have cash in hand and are ready to slap it on the counter at a moment's notice.
The company also wants to make privately collected data available to the public. Tracking ocean temperature, pollution, and other trends at such a detailed level is something many researchers want to do, and it's a waste of energy to hoard it. Company private database. They will work with Hub Ocean and other organizations to collect and publish metrics important to science and the public interest.
Alex Alcocer is working on a WaterDrone prototype. Image credits: Sirenna
Since its founding in 2022, Syrenna has operated in barebones mode, focusing first on running hardware. In other words, their work and recruitment was engineering-focused. The company is actually going out to sea to show the robots in action, so they can focus on the important part: getting buy-in from executives.
“We really want to improve the integration of visualization and BI tools so that data is understandable not only to engineers and marine biologists, but also to executives and general audiences,” Stroummen said. said. “We need more full-stack developers to make this happen.”
Their current total of just over $1 million in private and public investment is aimed at taking them to the next stage. “After this, we plan to raise even more money” – likely to start manufacturing, she added.
“These funds will be funded by our first investor Antler, industry-focused accelerator Catapult, angel investor Harald Norvik (former CEO of energy giant Equinor), Innovation Norway, the Norwegian Research Council, It is funded through a grant from the European Space Agency Business Incubation Center Norway,” Strommen said.
Gathering more and better information about the oceans, whether for industrial, scientific or conservation purposes, is the focus of many startups and nonprofit organizations. Companies like Bedrock are aiming to map the ocean floor, Saildrone is improving its autonomous surface vehicles, and the aforementioned satellite-based monitors are also advancing. However, Syrenna is unique in its ambition to provide a semi-fixed weather station of its kind. Combining these different methods (and certainly more in the future) may help us form a more comprehensive and actionable picture of the Earth's waters.