50 While environmental data is important for tracking and analysing climate change, it is also used in a range of applications other than climate science. These include planning for offshore construction projects, predicting earthquakes and their magnitudes, and monitoring and protecting marine wildlife. Therefore, the ability to collect environmental data from widespread ocean locations at low cost is in high demand across a range of markets. USVs naturally make a better fit for such work over crewed vessels. Keeping a crew safe and happy for potentially months on the ocean mandates making a ship large enough to maintain stability on rough seas, and to also contain kitchens, bathrooms, sleeping quarters, and so on. This necessitates huge construction and operating costs, with the latter involving vast quantities of fuel consumption, running strictly counter to the environmental nature of much ocean data collection. Massachusetts-based SeaTrac Systems has designed and built its SP-48 USV as an ideal alternative to crewed survey vessels, being considerably more cost-effective, sustainable and transportable – saving crews from the dull, dirty and dangerous months of work at sea that is needed to satisfy market demand for ocean data. The SP-48 is constructed as a flexible, payload-agnostic platform for operating a large and versatile mixture of survey sensors, communications relay devices, and more. Up to 70 kg of capacity for payloads is available on the 4.8 m long, 275 kg (empty weight) monohull USV, powered by a battery that can recharge at sea via solar panels on its top deck – a capability that can enable months of operation. SeaTrac was founded roughly seven years ago by Jigger Herman and Buddy Duncan, who met in MIT’s naval architecture department in the 1980s and bonded over a mutual experience in different forms of competitive sailing, as well as their passion for innovation. Subsequently, they collaborated on a range of projects, including racing sailboat engineering, which inspired them to develop an automated, CNC fabriccutting machine, subsequently building a large company around producing and selling them, not only for use in carboncomposite manufacturing but also in a range of cloth-based industries. The duo would go on to develop and commercialise smart home automation technologies (about 10 years before the iPad and other tablet computers appeared), and most recently they were drawn to the challenge of engineering low-cost, versatile USVs. This happened partially through learning of navy interest in the idea and partially out of a fascination with the Liquid Robotics Wave Glider, wondering if they could make something more cost-effective. Rory Jackson investigates a cost-effective and sustainable alternative to crewed survey vessels Sea fellows December/January 2025 | Uncrewed Systems Technology The SP-48 USV is the flagship product of SeaTrac Systems, founded by naval architects, inventors and long-time friends Buddy Duncan and Jigger Herman (Images courtesy of SeaTrac)
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