Intelligent. Indestructible. And with no humans on board, these sail boats are plotting their own course through the
waters of San Francisco Bay. If this guy gets his way, soon there will be hundreds of them trawling the ocean for data. (electronic music) This is Richard Jenkins. And he's someone who likes a challenge. Here he is trying to
break the world record for land sailing in 2009. I registered at 116 miles an hour, which I thought was kind of a low bar and I could do it in maybe a year and it was actually anything but easy. Instead of one year, it took Jenkins a decade of toiling in
deserts around the world. But break the record he did, clocking just over 126 miles per hour in his own custom designed vehicle. The next challenge was a nod to Magellan with a modern twist. It encouraged me that
nothing has ever gone around the world unmanned
and it's kind of the last great records to get. So Jenkins set out to
build a robotic sailboat capable of circumnavigating the globe. In 2013, he sent the world's
first unmanned vessel across an ocean, going from
San Francisco to Hawaii. We actually called it the Honey Badger because, you know, it doesn't give a shit, it just plows through anything. And somewhere, amidst all that, he found the time to start a new business. Based in this former aircraft
hangar, in Alameda, California Jenkin's company Saildrone
has already raised 90 million dollars from investors. And here's what's got those
venture capitalists so excited. A 20 strong fleet of
autonomous sea-worthy drones. Who put the shark faces on them? That was me, last weekend,
I just freehanded that. Powered only by the wind and sun, these GPS guided bots can survive at sea for months at a time. Bristling with sensors,
scientific equipment, and cameras, they beam back real time data and images via satellite
from the ocean surface. These two vehicles are
on their way back from a seven, almost eight month voyage. Probably 10 thousand miles. Where did they go? Down to the Equatorial Pacific, studying El Nino affects on the equator. Right. You wanna know what it looks like? Is this the camera view? Yes, this is a real time camera view. And there it is, that's a picture from Equatorial Pacific right now. It's nice and sunny. It's always sunny. It's always sunny down there. Right now, Saildrone is busy prepping for a new mission. The 2000 mile round trip
to an area of Pacific Ocean known as the white shark cafe. Great White's come to this
remote spot to hang out for months at a time and
scientists have spent decades wanting to know why. So we're working with Stanford University to take these vehicles and
literally follow the sharks to the cafe to understand, literally, what they're doing there. Is it food, is it reproduction? No one really knows. The drones are ideal
for missions like this. They're much cheaper
than large research ships and can collect many
different types of data. PH, chlorophyll, humidity, radiation, wind speed, direction, temperature, the list goes on. We measure everything you
could possibly measure near the surface of the ocean. And data like this sheds light on something that affects everyone. The weather. There really is infinite use for more accurate weather and climate data. So a big focus for us this
year is deploying drones into the hurricane field so
we can find out how strong they're going to be and
where they're going to land. And the impacts of that
information is huge. So for insurance risk, financial markets, and for people's safety. On an unmanned craft,
hurricane force winds would shred a conventional sail. So instead, the drones harness
the wind using the hard vertical wing adapted from
Jenkins' land sailing days. When wind passes over an
airplane wing, it produces lift. In this case, the wind
produces thrust that moves the sail drone forward. Jenkins invented a tail,
with a small adjustable tab to control this force. It stops the wing from
spinning out of control and lets the robot make
snap sailing decisions. Everything about the craft is 100 percent salt-water proof and submersible. Today I'm hitching a
ride to see Rich deploy two of his drones to the white shark cafe. There's not much wind
so they're given a tow into San Francisco Bay
before being released. There's enough wind here
now we can start sailing. We just left the city and this is where we normally let them go. Goodbye drone. As soon as their released,
they're on full autonomous mode. You guys have gone 200
thousand nautical miles without an incident? Yep, we've had the drones
operating for four years now. And not a single scratch on the vehicle. And nobody's every phoned
it in as a, like a UFO or some sailor's like what
the hell are these things doing out in the water? No, they behave really predictably and safely around ships. And there are animals that
come up and check them out? Yep. We got some really good pictures. So, there's a spotted fur
seal, jumped on for a ride up in the Chukchi sea
about 65 degrees north, and hung out there for about six hours. (electronic bubbly music) These drones have a two
week journey ahead of them before they make their shark rendezvous and soon, they'll be part
of an even bigger fleet. I want to get a thousand drones within three to four years. And that gives us full global coverage so we have as much or
better data of oceans that we currently have for land and that will transform our
understanding of our planet. (electronic fading out)
Solar-powered autonomous "Saildrones" are being deployed to the world's oceans to gather data used to improve weather forecasting