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The Seacharger, a solar-powered boat built by "a couple of hobbyists" in a garage, will set sail for a solo, 2,000-mile ocean journey from California to Hawaii on Memorial Day.
The project was conceived by Silicon Valley-based Damon McMillan, who has a background in aeronautics and astronautics and currently works in the unmanned vehicle industry.
McMillan—with help from his team of friends, who happen to be computer experts and mechanical and electrical engineers—started building the Seacharger back in December 2013 and tracked its construction in a detailed blog.
According to Seeker, if the Seacharger is able to make the epic crossing, it will become the first unmanned boat to cross an ocean using only solar power.
"We were inspired by a competition they have every year where they send a robotic sailboat across the Atlantic,
and so far that's never been successfully accomplished," McMillan says in the video.
A previous vessel named Scout attempted the trip in 2013 but was lost at sea due to unfavorable weather conditions.
The land-based captain told PC World it took a lot of trial and error to construct the boat, adding that it seemed like an impossible task at times.
“If I had started believing that I had to get to the end tomorrow, I never would have continued. So it’s always just one step at a time,” McMillan said.
The machine is pretty impressive for something built by a team of "hobbyists" who all seem to have full-time jobs. The 50-pound craft is 91 inches long and 22 inches wide with a hull made of foam covered in fiberglass. A brushless electric motor, the kind you might see on a remote-controlled hobby plane, will propel the boat at a cruising speed of about 3 knots.
Two Renogy photovoltaic panels rated at 100-watts and a 50 cell LiFePo4 battery bank should give the boat enough power for three days' travel in the dark or unlimited travel in the sun.
In order to navigate the waters from hundreds of miles away, the team installed an Arduino-based autopilot, a GPS and satellite modem on board the boat in a watertight compartment.
The developers said that their boat merely uses "a few pieces of ordinary technology to accomplish an extraordinary feat."
In a blog post last month, McMillan wrote that the technology actually works after Seacharger autonomously made two laps around Shoreline Lake in Mountain View, California.
"Sure, it looked a bit like a drunken sailor, but it DID work," the post stated. "Just gotta tune some gains."
You can track the progress of the boat after its May 30 launch here.
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If people in three European countries want to fight the climate crisis, they need to chill out more.
That's the conclusion of a new study from think tank Autonomy, which found that Germany, the UK and Sweden all needed to drastically reduce their workweeks to fight climate change.
"The rapid pace of labour-saving technology brings into focus the possibility of a shorter working week for all, if deployed properly," Autonomy Director Will Stronge said, The Guardian reported. "However, while automation shows that less work is technically possible, the urgent pressures on the environment and on our available carbon budget show that reducing the working week is in fact necessary."
The report found that if the economies of Germany, Sweden and the UK maintain their current levels of carbon intensity and productivity, they would need to switch to a six, 12 and nine hour work week respectively if they wanted keep the rise in global temperatures to the below two degrees Celsius promised by the Paris agreement, The Independent reported.
The study based its conclusions on data from the UN and the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) on greenhouse gas emissions per industry in all three countries.
The report comes as the group Momentum called on the UK's Labour Party to endorse a four-day work week.
"We welcome this attempt by Autonomy to grapple with the very real changes society will need to make in order to live within the limits of the planet," Emma Williams of the Four Day Week campaign said in a statement reported by The Independent. "In addition to improved well-being, enhanced gender equality and increased productivity, addressing climate change is another compelling reason we should all be working less."
Supporters of the idea linked it to calls in the U.S. and Europe for a Green New Deal that would decarbonize the economy while promoting equality and well-being.
"This new paper from Autonomy is a thought experiment that should give policymakers, activists and campaigners more ballast to make the case that a Green New Deal is absolutely necessary," Common Wealth think tank Director Mat Lawrence told The Independent. "The link between working time and GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions has been proved by a number of studies. Using OECD data and relating it to our carbon budget, Autonomy have taken the step to show what that link means in terms of our working weeks."
Stronge also linked his report to calls for a Green New Deal.
"Becoming a green, sustainable society will require a number of strategies – a shorter working week being just one of them," he said, according to The Guardian. "This paper and the other nascent research in the field should give us plenty of food for thought when we consider how urgent a Green New Deal is and what it should look like."
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