How ocean data is collected today
There are four common ways to gather data at sea, each with a trade-off:
- Research vessels - full control and heavy payloads, but tens of thousands of pounds per day, and data only while the ship is on station. See the research vessel alternative.
- Moored buoys - long time series at a fixed point, but they need mooring permits and maintenance, and cannot be repositioned once set. See the moored buoy alternative.
- Gliders and floats - long endurance below the surface, but limited payload, slow to reposition, and no persistent surface communications.
- Autonomous surface vehicles - continuous data for months, relocatable on demand, with real-time satellite delivery and a payload bay for your sensors.
Persistent collection with Scout
A Scout USV is solar-electric, so missions are measured in months, not days. It launches from a slipway, beach or boat, large or small, and transits to station under its own power, even thousands of miles offshore, with no deployment vessel to charter. On station it holds a fixed point as a virtual anchor, runs survey transects between waypoints, or relays data from seabed instruments and underwater vehicles to satellite. Data arrives quality-controlled at a dashboard or API in real time, and you own it.
What you can measure
Scout carries metocean and oceanographic sensors (wave, wind, sea surface temperature, pressure, salinity), passive acoustics for vessel and marine mammal detection, and an open payload bay for your own instruments. Browse the payload configurations or, if you are pricing a survey, compare the cost of a research vessel charter.
Own it or task us
Buy a Scout to run within your group from £40,000, or take it fully managed as data-as-a-service: done-for-you deployments with no upfront cost, and quality-controlled data delivered straight to your own cloud. New to the terms? See the ocean robotics glossary.