Uncrewed Surface Vehicle (USV)

An uncrewed surface vehicle is an autonomous or remotely supervised vessel that observes from the air-sea interface without a crew aboard. Wind- and solar-powered USVs such as the Saildrone run multi-month missions covering thousands of nautical miles, carrying a meteorological suite, surface CTD, ADCP, pCO2, and acoustic fisheries sensors. Sitting at the boundary, a USV measures the air-sea fluxes and surface meteorology that subsurface floats and gliders cannot, and it loiters in places too remote or hazardous for crewed ships, hurricane cores, the Southern Ocean, the Arctic ice edge. Saildrones have circumnavigated Antarctica and sailed into Category 4 hurricanes returning continuous data.