A great piece from Robots.net about the robot Wave Glider that survived Sandy, collecting data all along the way. (Which I found via DIY Drones.)

An autonomous Wave Glider robot named Mercury floated alone in the path of Hurricane Sandy about 100 miles east of Toms River, New Jersey. The robot survived 70 knot winds on the ocean’s surface while its sensors gathered weather data and transmitted it in real time. The robot recorded a drop in barometric pressure of more than 54 mbars with a low of 946 mbars. The robot also carries cameras, wave sensors, fish trackers, hydrophones, temperature sensors, conductivity sensors, dissolved oxygen sensors, magnetometer, GPS, and a flurometer. For more details on what this robot does, see the article Air-Sea Interface Monitoring of Hurricanes at the Liquid Robots website. For some technical details of the robot itself, see the Wave Glider Technology Brief (PDF format) and Wave Glider Specifications document (PDF format).

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Underwater view of a Wave Glider robot in rough seas