In A Historic First, Underwater Drones Collect Real-time Acoustic Data Off Hawaii

The Naval Postgraduate School of U.S. and Seatrec, manufacturer of energy harvesting systems that generate electricity from ocean temperatures, have together developed an autonomous underwater drone, the Persistent Smart Acoustic Profiler (PSAP) Voyager, capable of collecting and transmitting oceanographic and acoustic data in real-time and nearly indefinitely.

The PSAP Voyager was deployed off the coast of Kona, Hawaii, in November 2024. It operates using ocean thermal energy conversion, allowing it to power its onboard instruments without requiring battery swaps, external power sources, or data retrieval.

This marks the first-ever acoustic data collection by hydrophone-equipped underwater drones powered by energy harvested from the ocean’s temperature differences. The system is expected to benefit naval operations, research and marine science.

Naval forces rely on stealth and quiet operations at sea, making underwater acoustic sensing essential.

Traditional hydrophones used for listening to underwater sounds are either deployed from ships, costing around $50,000 per day, or placed on the seafloor with power cables connected to land, a method only available in …

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