Seatrec moved to North County San Diego from Los Angeles about one year ago in search of modern space, affordable cost of living and fellow ocean-tech-minded businesses. Its new home in the Vista Business Park is where it continues to develop energy harvesting and robotics technologies that help improve how much we know about the ocean, and just as importantly, how we capture the data.
As CEO and Founder Yi Chao, Ph.D., explains, currently, there are no laws that prohibit scientific littering in the ocean of exhausted equipment – including that with lithium-ion batteries – after experiments end or when equipment fails. His company is extending the life of aquatic drones and providing new ways of capturing data that will increase our knowledge of ocean topography, among other things.
“Billions of dollars’ worth of equipment is sitting on the seafloor as trash,” said Chao, “and Seatrec’s unique contribution to ocean robotics is our energy harvesting technology that makes ocean exploration more sustainable and cost effective. Our goal is to develop low-cost robots with different types of sensors that can map the environment. North County had the cost of living that our younger engineers could afford, and we’ve also been able to find new employees here. Everyone lives 10-20 minutes from our office. We went from having people running late to meetings because traffic was so bad, to surfing at lunch. Everyone is happier.”
Read more about Seatrec’s robotic and energy harvesting technologies and how the tides can change to allow for more complete and detailed data of our oceans.
