Indestructible.

And with no humans on board,

these sail boats are plotting

their own course through the waters of San Francisco Bay.

If this guy gets his way,

soon there will be hundreds of them

trawling the ocean for data.

(electronic music)

This is Richard Jenkins.

And he's someone who likes a challenge.

Here he is trying to break the world record

for land sailing in 2009.

I registered at 116 miles an hour,

which I thought was kind of a low bar

and I could do it in maybe a year

and it was actually anything but easy.

Instead of one year, it took Jenkins

a decade of toiling in deserts around the world.

But break the record he did,

clocking just over 126 miles per hour

in his own custom designed vehicle.

The next challenge was a nod to Magellan

with a modern twist.

It encouraged me that nothing has ever gone

around the world unmanned and it's kind of the last

great records to get.

So Jenkins set out to build a robotic sailboat

capable of circumnavigating the globe.

In 2013, he sent the world's first unmanned vessel

across an ocean, going from San Francisco to Hawaii.

We actually called it the Honey Badger

because, you know, it doesn't give a shit,

it just plows through anything.

And somewhere, amidst all that,

he found the time to start a new business.

Based in this former aircraft hangar, in Alameda, California

Jenkin's company Saildrone has already raised

90 million dollars from investors.

And here's what's got those venture capitalists so excited.

A 20 strong fleet of autonomous sea-worthy drones.

Who put the shark faces on them?

That was me, last weekend, I just freehanded that.

Powered only by the wind and sun,

these GPS guided bots can survive

at sea for months at a time.

Bristling with sensors, scientific equipment,

and cameras, they beam back real time data

and images via satellite from the ocean surface.

These two vehicles are on their way back from

a seven, almost eight month voyage.

Probably 10 thousand miles.

Where did they go?

Down to the Equatorial Pacific,

studying El Nino affects on the equator.

Right.

You wanna know what it looks like?

Is this the camera view?

Yes, this is a real time camera view.

And there it is, that's a picture from

Equatorial Pacific right now.

It's nice and sunny.

It's always sunny.

It's always sunny down there.

Right now, Saildrone is busy

prepping for a new mission.

The 2000 mile round trip to an area of Pacific Ocean

known as the white shark cafe.

Great White's come to this remote spot to hang out

for months at a time and scientists have spent decades

wanting to know why.

So we're working with Stanford University

to take these vehicles and literally follow the sharks

to the cafe to understand, literally,

what they're doing there.

Is it food, is it reproduction?

No one really knows.

The drones are ideal for missions like this.

They're much cheaper than large research ships

and can collect many different types of data.

PH, chlorophyll, humidity, radiation,

wind speed, direction, temperature,

the list goes on.

We measure everything you could possibly measure

near the surface of the ocean.

And data like this sheds light

on something that affects everyone.

The weather.

There really is infinite use for

more accurate weather and climate data.

So a big focus for us this year is deploying drones

into the hurricane field so we can find out how strong

they're going to be and where they're going to land.

And the impacts of that information is huge.

So for insurance risk, financial markets,

and for people's safety.

On an unmanned craft, hurricane force winds

would shred a conventional sail.

So instead, the drones harness the wind using the hard

vertical wing adapted from Jenkins' land sailing days.

When wind passes over an airplane wing, it produces lift.

In this case, the wind produces thrust that moves

the sail drone forward.

Jenkins invented a tail, with a small adjustable tab

to control this force.

It stops the wing from spinning out of control

and lets the robot make snap sailing decisions.

Everything about the craft is 100 percent

salt-water proof and submersible.

Today I'm hitching a ride to see Rich deploy

two of his drones to the white shark cafe.

There's not much wind so they're given a tow

into San Francisco Bay before being released.

There's enough wind here now we can start sailing.

We just left the city and this is where

we normally let them go.

Goodbye drone.

As soon as their released, they're on full autonomous mode.

You guys have gone 200 thousand nautical miles

without an incident?

Yep, we've had the drones operating for four years now.

And not a single scratch on the vehicle.

And nobody's every phoned it in as a, like a UFO

or some sailor's like what the hell are these things

doing out in the water?

No, they behave really predictably

and safely around ships.

And there are animals that come up and check them out?

Yep.

We got some really good pictures.

So, there's a spotted fur seal, jumped on for a ride

up in the Chukchi sea about 65 degrees north,

and hung out there for about six hours.

(electronic bubbly music)

These drones have a two week journey ahead of them

before they make their shark rendezvous

and soon, they'll be part of an even bigger fleet.

I want to get a thousand drones

within three to four years.

And that gives us full global coverage

so we have as much or better data of oceans

that we currently have for land

and that will transform our understanding of our planet.

(electronic fading out)