 Hello and welcome to tomorrow. My name is Lisa and I'm gonna be your host today. This is tomorrow's STEAM Discovery 2.05. I'm super excited to get you guys talking to someone who I find incredibly inspiring. Today we're gonna be talking to Julie Angus. She is the CEO and co-founder of Open Ocean Robotics. They're building a fleet of autonomous ocean drones and these drones are packed with sensors that are gonna help us understand our planet a whole lot better. But she was also the first woman to row across the Atlantic from mainland to mainland and a recipient of the National Geographic Adventure of the Year Award. But here's the thing that I find incredibly interesting to me. She's a Bachelor of Science in Biology and Psychology and a Master of Science in Molecular Biology. And I actually have a degree in Molecular Biology as well. I remember being totally stuck in a lab, getting a sore wrist from perpeting chemicals all the time. So, Julie, I wanna ask you, how did you cope from being in a molecular biology lab to being out on the oceans, building these incredible craft that can totally revolutionize the way we understand our planet? Well, thanks for that question, Lisa. And thanks for having me on the show. It's a real pleasure to be here. So yes, I would definitely say my career has not taken a linear path. So I really loved molecular biology. I love genetics. And for my masters, I was researching a rare genetic disorder called Gauchat disease and how to make the enzyme replacement therapeutic for it. So I became very interested in that intersection of where science meets the real world and commercializing the things people develop in universities. So instead of staying in research after my masters, I moved into business, first working in technology transfer and then working in business development. And I've always loved the outdoors and I love the ocean. I lived in Victoria, BC in Canada and that's also where I did my masters. So when I was working in business development, you know, very nine to five desk job, I decided to take some time off to row across the Atlantic Ocean. And there were a lot of reasons why that inspired me and I wanted to do it in part because I love the ocean. I have a fascination with it. I wanted to, you know, push that boundary. And then that just led to this completely different career going on expeditions, writing books, producing documentaries and eventually founding this autonomous boat company, Open Ocean Robotics. So let's get back to the fact that you sailed, that you rode across the Atlantic being the first woman to do so mainland to mainland. Did that rowing experience help guide the work that you're doing with these boats? Because you are going to attempt to be the first people to send an ocean going drone across the Atlantic for the first time. So how did those experiences kind of line up and yeah, what advantages do you have that you've actually been sitting in there in that seat knowing what those drones are going to go through? Yeah, so we actually spent five months rowing across the Atlantic. So it's not a fast way to cross the ocean. It is a truly incredible experience though. When you spend that much time on the open ocean, you know, you're looking at blue sea and blue sky and gray sea, you know, for months on end there is nothing else out there except the ocean and the wildlife in it. And, you know, you really, it hits home how huge our ocean is and how poorly understood it is, you know, very few people will see the middle of the ocean. And we really still know very little about our oceans. I mean, there's that saying that we know more about, you know, our moon than our oceans. And I think that is very true. And part of the reason is because it is so hard to explore our oceans. It's so expensive, it's dangerous, they're so huge. So I think really the idea for this company started when we were in that rowboat thinking about ways in which we could better understand our oceans. I think you touched on a really important point there of being able to understand our oceans and how they affect our planet. So to do that, your company is building these autonomous drones. Could you tell us a little bit about, you currently got two that I was looking at, the Force 12 Explorer and the Solar Explorer. Could you tell us how they differ and just a little bit about what's special about each of them? Yeah, so I think for ocean exploration and data collection offshore, it would be incredible to have a vessel that can go for months on end. So that means it has to harvest energy from the environment around it. So that could be wind energy, solar energy, wave energy. So the first boat that we developed is the Force 12 Explorer, which is our autonomous sailboat. So it uses the wind, it has two rigid wing sails and it can go out on the ocean for months at a time. It's equipped with sensors and communication devices so it can flood ocean data and send that back. And then the second boat we developed was a solar boat, Solar Explorer. And it has a, this is that early prototype on top of those three calls, the trimer and shape, solar deck goes on top of it. And since then we've actually developed a smaller solar boat, Data Explorer. And that's the first boat that we're commercially manufacturing. And we feel that solar is great in many ways for an autonomous boat. Just like the sailboat, it can go out on the ocean for months at a time. But the advantage with solar is that you have complete control over it. Like with a sailboat for, if you've ever been a sailboat, you know you're dependent on the wind. You have to tack, you can't go in the exact direction you want. But a solar boat is very much like driving a car. You harvest your solar energy, you store it in your lithium ion battery bank and you can go exactly where you want to go. You can go even when the sun doesn't shine because you have those reserves. So we're really excited about the potential for solar in terms of endurance offshore autonomous boats. Yeah, I think you hit another good point there. The fact of using solar, being able to store that energy and not having to do any additional kind of engineering in that sense so that these boats can be out there for months at a time. We've got a nice question from our chat room here. We've got Peter Yannick on YouTube who wants to know, he wants to know how the weather was during your travel on the Atlantic. And I want to talk about that in regards to these drones that you're building. What kind of weather can they handle out on the ocean? Yeah, so we actually had terrible weather. So we spent two years looking at historical weather data, speaking to experts. So we would plan our route and our timing to, reduce our chances of encountering storms and definitely not hurricanes. But the year we did it was the year of Hurricane Katrina, which was the worst hurricane season in all of history. So there were more hurricanes than ever before. There were more powerful hurricanes. There were hurricanes outside of the hurricane season. There were hurricanes and parts of the ocean that were thought to be too cold for hurricanes. So we were actually hit by two hurricanes when we were in that low boat. The first one was when we were three weeks out, Hurricane Vince, it was the most northern and most eastern hurricane in all of history. And it came directly over us. And that was a completely terrifying situation. I mean, we had prepared for bad weather, but it's pretty frightening when you're in a rowboat and you know, you can't outrun it and you have this huge storm coming towards you. So that was the first hurricane and then the second one as was after the end of hurricane season. So the conditions are pretty intense, hurricane force winds, waves that are, you know, as high as a five-story building. So we definitely understand the power of the ocean, what it takes for a boat to go through those kinds of conditions. And you know, the rowboat is really designed well. It's designed so it's self-writing. It's designed to be able to endure those big seas and you can design small boats very well to endure heavy seas. And so that's what we've done with our autonomous boats. And so our goal is that they can go through hurricanes as well because when you put a boat out onto the ocean for months at a time, it is going to have that heavy weather hit it. I have extreme respect for you to be able to be out there and hit not just one, but two hurricanes. That must've been incredibly frightening and I just props to you because that's so scary. But you mentioned that, you know, you've gone through all this weather data and we're like, yep, we're gonna roll across now, the weather's gonna be fine. Like this is the best chance of having like the most smooth weather that we can for this trip. And to be hit by not one, but two hurricanes and intense hurricanes, you know, we're seeing this pattern of our, the climate on our earth changing hurricanes becoming more frequent, they're becoming stronger. And we see that in the news today with, you know, like Dorian that's been all over the news. So can your autonomous boats help in understanding how that weather is changing and what kind of like data can we get from using these boats that might be able to help us maybe even have better warning systems for hurricane systems or anything like that. Yeah, I think a better data collection from the ocean is key to making better predictions about our weather, better understanding our oceans, the impact of climate change and helping, you know, maintain the sustainability of our oceans, allowing industry to function more effectively. So there are lots of things that our autonomous boats can measure. As you said, they can measure weather conditions. So they can measure things like wind speed and direction, wave height and period, water, surface temperature, currents, dissolved oxygen. So those are all parameters that are really important for understanding the weather of our oceans but also the health of our oceans. And you can go beyond that. You can put a whole range of sensors. Our boats are basically platforms that can carry different sensors to measure ocean parameters. So you can measure other things. You can look at the population of fish. You can listen for marine mammals. You can look for pollutants. You can better understand microplastic pollutants. So there's a lot of opportunity to better understand our oceans using technology like this and especially vessels that can be out there for months at a time because right now it's really difficult to get data from the middle of the ocean. Research ships are very expensive. Offshore ships cost like $75,000 a day. They're limited to the track that they can travel on whereas an autonomous boat, it's, you don't have to worry about the weather. There's no crew on it and it's just really a fraction of the cost. I love that you talk about having these boats in the middle of nowhere. We've got a question coming up from YouTube who wants to know, we've got Mike McHugh who's saying, do the robot boats use Arduino or some other off-the-shelf kind of components? Yeah, so they use off-the-shelf and custom components with the autonomous vessels. So we've been working on this technology for almost two years now. We're at the stage where we're moving from prototype to commercialization. So we have four prototypes that we've been testing in the waters off Vancouver Island and we're currently making five commercial vessels. So those will be the data explorer, the smaller solar powered vessel and we're going to start commercial sort of data collection. So data that has real scientific value. Speaking of the data collection and collaborating with scientists, do you have any like universities or research institutions that you're working with to kind of tailor make these boats so that they can have the best conditions for getting the best science data? Yeah, absolutely. So we've been working with the University of British Columbia as well as a commotion technology access center to design the boats and the hull and look at the composite manufacturing. We're also working with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in Canada to look at measuring ocean variables that they're interested in. So two of the things that we're measuring with them is ocean currents. So looking at the current profile in the vertical water column, so through the depths. And that's really important for a number of things. One of the things they're interested in is being able to make better models of what they predict the currents will do for ports like the port of Vancouver. Other things it's important for is predicting oil spill movement so you can tailor your response. And then the other thing we're doing with them is marine mammal monitoring. So using acoustics to listen for whales as well as the background noise. So marine mammals are very affected by marine noise and here in Victoria and off the West Coast we have a southern resident killer whale population that has numbers that are in the 70 individuals. So it's really endangered and we're looking at ways in which we can better understand them and put measures in place to better protect them. And then the other organization we're working with is the Canadian Coast Guard. So we'll be doing survey work for them. So sea floor mapping. So that's another thing that the boats are good at is you can put a multi beam sonar on the bottom of the boat and it basically draws a picture of what the sea floor looks like and that's really important for creating charts for boaters so that they don't run on ground. It's amazing that you've already got so many people coming on board to jump on this opportunity. It just goes to show how many uses there are for this kind of product out there and how much science data and just data that can help everyday people like people that are coming into a port and maybe they have to usually rely on getting a pilot to get their boat to dock to a berth and then now they can just have this data from these autonomous drones and they don't need to have to rely on someone else to come and get them and guide them in. So I think that's pretty cool. We've got another couple of questions here from our chat room. A lot of people are pretty interested in how these boats actually operate. So I'm gonna go with a sparker on YouTube wants to know how good can the drones operate in polar regions considering that they rely on solar power? Yeah, so polar regions have less light especially in the winter and also the light comes at a lower angle so it doesn't have the same intensity. So for a solar vessel, it's not really the ideal area to capture sunlight. So it would be better for a sailboat where you still have solar panels on the sailboat but you're not using the solar energy for propulsion you're using the wind for propulsion instead the solar powers, the sensors and the navigation and the rudder. So I think you could still use a strictly solar boat. I would say our larger solar vessel which is the one that we're building next would be a better option because it has a 1200 watt array so it's able to capture more light so in those low level conditions. And then it also depends on the sensors that you put on board. So our solar boat, it's designed to run with very minimal energy input with just 30 watts. You can move the boat at about two knots so that's about four kilometers an hour and run your basic navigation and communication equipment. And then depending on the sensors you put on board that will increase the power consumption. You mentioned that it takes just 30 watts of power to be able to run all of that stuff. So how much power goes into maintaining the communications link back to your mission control and how do your boats actually communicate? Do they use cell towers? Do they use satellite? So the boats use both cellular and satellite and there's also radio communication when it's line of sight. So when it's in cell service it will use the cellular network and then when it moves out of that it will seamlessly switch into satellite. So you are always communicating with the vessel. You can send information to the vessel and you can take information off the vessel. So for example, when you're in a cell area that has cellular coverage we have 360 degree cameras so you can visually see everything that's going around the boat and you can take over control of the boat from autonomous to remotely operated and you can drive it with a joystick. And then when it moves to the satellite you can still update the navigation of the boat but it's lines of code instead because you don't have that ability to send those high data files. And the same thing with the information you're getting from the boat. So you can get high bandwidth data from the boat. So even like acoustics, other high data sensor information when you're on satellite but once you move into, sorry, when you're on cellular once you move into satellite it's far more limited but we do, we're working with a number of IoT and communication experts and there are ways in which you can optimize these systems to increase the data that you're able to get off of it and also as we move forward you can do more onboard processing using artificial intelligence and machine learning to be able to figure out what is the important data to be able to compress it more. So there's endless things you can do to optimize that. That's incredible. I love that you've been able to get such a robust communications link with those boats. Ideally, in my perfect world I would love to see a fleet of these boats out potentially out off the say east coast of Florida with the ability to string back video of potentially exciting, the very powerful machines coming back from space and maybe not have communications dropouts but we've got a lot more questions in our chat room. So Johnny Spacer from YouTube wants to know could drones such as these be available for search and rescue purposes when needed? I think they could, yeah. So it depends on where you are in terms of communication and what you're depending on and what you're searching for. So obviously if you're searching for a downed plane or a shipwreck you might be using underwater acoustics so that would be like the multi-beam sonar that we're using for our sea floor mapping. So definitely for that, if you're looking for a vessel or people in the water it would depend on how you're gonna be able to detect those. So I mean, you might rely on LiDAR or visual. I think it would be more challenging especially when you're in a satellite area but you could have a system where say you have a main boat and then you use these boats on the water as a force multiplier so they could communicate with the main vessel. So you're taking away that need for satellite communication you're still able to get that high bandwidth data. So there's definitely lots of opportunity and I think like in the future we're going to increasingly be able to utilize autonomous technology like this for a range of applications. The charm is just so totally enthralled with this all of your technology. They're coming up with so many ideas of like things that potentially you guys might be able to do in the future. So I'm gonna go through a couple here and maybe we can talk about whether these could be a possibility or maybe there's some technical challenges as to why maybe you can't do these things. So Jared Elvin on YouTube wants to know how about using a fleet of those smaller autonomous vessels to collect plastics in the ocean. Like I'm guessing they're envisioning them coming together and kind of shepherding the plastics together and then maybe those get lifted up onto a collection vessel so that they can be recycled. Yeah I think autonomous vessels to collect plastics is a great idea and there are companies that are developing autonomous boats for that. I think right now it's mostly like imports and harbor uses and they're able to sift through large quantities of water and then sort of hold on to the plastic debris. So I think there are options. It would depend on the design of the vessel. I think it'd be pretty easy to put sensors on it to detect micro plastics in areas with high plastic pollution. Other things that some of the, a lot of plastic debris in the ocean is actually discarded fishing gear or lost fishing gear, ghost fishing, which continues to fish. And these are quite large items of plastic and by some statistics it's like 40 to 60%. So I think there might be ways to go out and detect areas like that that have a lot of the ghost fishing gear and then working with a support vessel it would go and get that larger plastic and deliver it to a depot, I guess, a floating depot. Cool. Plastics are such a huge problem in the ocean and to have even just the data of where the plastic is not necessarily collecting them. As you say, that's totally a way to tackle that problem as well and any more information we can get on that is always beneficial. Another really cool idea from our chat room comes from Smokey Doug. Have you ever given thought to including a quadcopter drone on board for aerial surveys? Yes, we have. And that is a great idea and that is something that we're actively thinking about. There's a huge advantage to be able to have that aerial perspective, especially because our boats are pretty small. They're low to the water. And if you're in big seas, not that you would necessarily be able to launch an aerial drone in big seas, it's hard to get that vantage. Like I know from our time out in the rowboat, sometimes you feel like you're in a valley surrounded by these mountains of water. So to be able to get that aerial perspective, if you're looking for something, if you're looking for marine mammals, if you just want to get a better vantage would be amazing. And there's so much innovation in drone technology and you could definitely envision ways in which it could land on the vessel and be able to use like induction charging or something like that to power the drone. And then you could go out for a month at a time with this drone and well, two drones. I love the idea of combining drones with autonomous ocean craft. A few episodes ago, we talked to Dr. Vanessa Perotta and she works on for marine mammal monitoring for whale monitoring. She has a drone that she's put a petri dish on and they actually fly the drone. They open up the petri dish and fly it through the whale. I don't remember the technical term, but when they like spout out the water and so they fly it through and collect these petri dishes and monitor like the health of the whales like without even like hurting them. So I could just imagine those drones being like put on a fleet of your craft and going out into the middle of the ocean and getting all this data from like all these like whales and marine mammals out there. I think that'd be incredibly cool. Yeah, it would be incredibly cool. I've heard about that research. I think they're also using that on the east coast of Canada to study the right whales, but it is amazing. It's like they're collecting kind of whale snot basically and doing all this analysis on it. Yeah, so another question related to monitoring animals animals out in the oceans. We've got Smoky Dog wants to know what sort of instruments will be aboard these platforms and whether they will have cameras above. And we did mention that your platforms do have cameras above, but also below the waterline. So like underwater cameras. Yeah, it's interesting. We don't have underwater cameras yet, but that is definitely something that is possible. And in terms of the sensors that will be on it, it'll be environmental sensors as well as ocean sensors. So in our solar boat that we're making, it has a self-riding roll bar at the back end. And that also acts as a platform for some of those sensors. So kind of a weather station, things to measure wind speed, wind direction, air temperature, solar radiation. Then on the vessel, you can measure things like wave height and period. In the water you can have sensors where the water's flowing past the sensors, just detecting things like dissolved oxygen, temperature, conductivity. You can look for pollutants. And those are sort of the lower power sensors. And then you can have things like a hydrophone to listen for whales or an ADCP, which is an acoustic Doppler current profiler to take those ocean current readings or the multi-beam sonar to take a picture of the seafloor bottom. So there's a lot of different sensors. And the thing with sensor technology is it's constantly becoming smaller and less power hungry. So it's always growing what you can measure. I mean, even with these boats, you can even measure EDNA. So taking small samples of water and then finding out what fish have passed through those waters by just detecting the DNA. Wow, I didn't even think that that was an application. But now that you say that, that makes complete sense. You're out there in the ocean, you're only limited by the imagination of what sensors and what data you wanna collect. So there are just endless possibilities. But that also means that a lot of data is gonna be generated. And so we did have a question here talking about kind of the business aspect of open ocean robotics. Through my research, I kind of saw that you guys have had nearly a million dollars worth of support so far and investment. So Andy Law wants to know, are you selling the drones or are you selling the data? Like what's an example of your custom use case and from the revenue kind of earning aspect? How does that kind of side work? Yeah, so starting out we're a data as a service company. So we're not selling our boats but we'll go out there and collect the data that the customer needs for however long they need it. So that can be a range of data. So I mean, some of those applications are see for mapping, ocean currents, marine mammal monitoring and that data goes into our cloud platform where some of it is in real time. Some of it is after the mission is complete. And so we'll have some analytic tools for the researchers there. And having the data in a cloud platform also enables us to collect additional data. In some cases, things we're really interested in and starting to build that database of proprietary ocean insights. And then thinking about ways we can use that to even better understand our oceans. Maybe looking at that data set with satellite data or other ocean data that's collected by universities and using advanced data analysis and artificial intelligence and machine learning and all those techniques to draw more insights from the ocean. And I think we don't even know yet what some of those things might be that we could discover but I think by having this data, the potential is there. That's so cool. I'm sad that I can't go and buy one of these vessels for myself. I just put like a camera on it and have a live stream. It could be for our next show. So this is our STEAM science, technology, engineering, art, mathematics show. But eventually we want to have a show all about oceans. And I mean, maybe in the future, way off, it would be maybe cool to buy a drone from you guys and control it with a joystick but just have a camera on it and be live streaming video from the middle of the ocean. I think that would be really cool. Maybe in the future. That would be amazing. And definitely the goal is also to be able to put these boats into people's hands so that they can control them and they can use them in exactly this way that they want to. And the advantage of a solar electric boat is that it is easier to control than say a sailboat or something that, you drive it like a car, right? I mean, there's still learning and training that has to go into operating it properly but that is something that you can launch it from a boat launch ramp. You don't have to have a research ship. So it's easy to use autonomous vessel and it has the power to, you know, not only do coastal waters, but offshore waters. And like thinking about these boats in the middle of the ocean, I think one of the exciting things is just how rapidly technology is evolving and especially in communication. Like when we think about low earth orbit satellites and those really widespread and having the ability to get data, like video data from the middle of the ocean using those low earth orbit satellites, I mean, it will be incredible. You'll just be able to, you know, have instant access to the ocean anywhere. I think that's incredibly important. We're huge space fans here at tomorrow and you've hit the nail on the head there. There are so many technologies that you guys are utilizing not just like space and low earth orbit constellations, but also, you know, battery technology. I believe you guys use lithium batteries to store your power on board. These technologies are gonna continue to get better without any investment from you guys. And so you reap the benefits of using this technology. The same thing with, you know, machine learning and artificial intelligence. That's gonna improve the data products that you guys are able to put out there. So you guys are taking a really, really intelligent path there to be using those technologies that are gonna improve and help your product in the long run. Let's talk a little bit about where your company is gonna head in the future. So we've talked about the different sensors, the different data that you guys can get, the science and the things we can learn about our planet, but where do you kind of see your boats heading in the next, say, let's look even kind of short term in the next two or three, four years. What's the next big hurdle for you guys? I think right now it's, you know, getting our boats on the water, getting a lot of testing time, seeing where there are issues. I mean, it's really challenging building an autonomous boat. You know, there's lots of technological hurdles. There's lots of ways we can continue to improve them. So, you know, getting them just in the field, collecting data, seeing, you know, what needs to be improved in terms of, you know, our autonomous systems, propulsion, data communication, that sort of thing. I think once we have a lot of those issues sorted and have our boats working well, spending more time thinking about the data, you know, what kind of onboard processing we can do, improving our collision avoidance, looking at ways to, you know, do real-time processing, things for like, you know, maybe detecting whales and sending out an alert saying, hey, there's a whale here, you know, so shipping can be alerted. So I think, like, as we focus away from the autonomous vessels and more to the data, I think that's the way the technology arc will go for us. We had a fantastic question from Mandanar on YouTube. How do you actually go about collision avoidance so you don't run into ships or whales or anything like that? So right now, the surveys we're doing are in the cellular network, so we use our cameras. We have 360-degree cameras, and so we can visually see. We're also starting to build a collision avoidance system with onboard processing and are putting the sensors in place so it'll use things like LiDAR, optical data, pre-programmed variables like, you know, the geography depth sounder. So those will be some of the variables that will go into that. And, you know, right now, it's still, you know, at the very early stages, like our collision avoidance system will allow our boat to stop, you know, see something ahead of it using the LiDAR. So that's why, you know, we want to develop our technology in incremental steps. We want to ensure that at these early stages, we do have that complete control of it. We operate it in areas where we can ensure the safety of it. And it also uses AIS for collision avoidance. That's Automatic Identification System for vessels and offshore where it's generally just commercial vessels. Almost all vessels have it. So it will be able to see other vessels using that, and also other vessels will be able to detect it. That's really cool. You mentioned AIS. I used to work for a rocket laboratory. And for that company, we launched some satellites that tracked AIS. So, I mean, to be out in the middle of the ocean and using that system, I guess you can kind of have all that data working together to help improve your collision avoidance systems. But another question here from the YouTube chat from Mordekis. They want to know, what's the current life expectancy of your drone? And then I just want to add, how do you think that that life expectancy is going to improve as your technology and your processes and your operations improve? So right now, I think our drones, they're designed to be able to go out onto the ocean for months at a time. So we're saying about six months. And then they'll have to be pulled in for maintenance. In particular, biofouling will be a challenge. Things are just going to grow on it, grow on the hull, grow on the sensors. In terms of the life expectancy, just like another boat, these autonomous boats will be able to be used for 10 years or more. And I don't think we can really say the life expectancy yet. I mean, think that we'll need to be maintenance. But the pod motor will need to be maintained regularly. The sensors will need to be recalibrated. Maybe the solar panels will lose some of their ability. But I think with regular maintenance, you're going to be able to use these boats for a pretty long time. Yeah. One of the design things that I noticed came to play with how efficient your boats are out on the sea. You actually use, there's no hole in the hull that connects the propulsion module from where that mode of force is generated. Could you tell us a little bit about why that was so important? Because I read that on your website. And I was like, huh, that's pretty neat. There's no way that water can actually get into the craft. And I don't think I fully understood why that was such a cool and efficient system. So could you explain that a little bit? Yeah. So we've gone through a few different iterations for our propulsion system. And the goal was we wanted to be extremely energy efficient. We wanted to be able to go for months at a time without any kind of maintenance. And we wanted it to have enough power to be able to move the vessel at a good speed. So we designed a system that used a magnetic coupler instead of a through-haul drive shaft. So this allows us to have the motor inside the vessel. And then instead of the drive shaft going through the vessel and having to have the bearing seals and other mechanisms in place to ensure that there's no water leaking through, which caused friction and need to be replaced, it's just magnetic forces. It's a magnetic coupler. And that will turn the drive shaft and spin the propeller. So that is the system that we have for our larger vessels. And, I mean, as far as we know, I'm not sure if there's really any other boats that use that kind of a system. But it was a great solution for what we needed. So that's for a larger solar explorer. And then for the smaller data explorer, we're actually also using a magnetic coupler. But it's in a pod style motor. So it is the motor and the propeller are outside of the vessel. So that same thing, we don't have a full in the hull. That's really cool. I love that you've taken that kind of unique design approach and ran with it and get all these extra benefits that go along with it. So coming around to that kind of technical side and that kind of expertise, are there any skills or job roles that you're trying to fill at the moment at your company or any skill shortages that you have? Thank you for asking. Yes, we are. We're actually hiring right now for an autonomous systems engineer. So this would be, most likely, an electrical engineer who has experience with embedded software to do a lot of the system design for our autonomous systems, power management, starting to integrate sensors. And as we start to move from prototype to production level. So we are. And we're always looking for great people. Right now, we're still really small. We're six people. With this hire will be seven. But yeah, if you have anybody out there who is interested, please get in touch. Obviously, we're in Canada. So it helps if you're in Canada or able to work in Canada. Awesome. We have a lot of viewers out there that are quite technically minded. So hopefully if any of them are interested, maybe they could send along their resume and see how they go. But I just want to say how enthralled I am with this technology. There's just so many applications out there to not only to help us understand the weather and weather patterns and potentially things like hurricanes, but also what's going on underneath the oceans, what's going on on the ocean floor, the way that ships are moving about in the ocean, as well as plant and animal life as well. So your technology is so cool and it can just affect so many different things. So I just want to say a huge thank you for taking the time out of your Saturday to come along and join us on our show. And before we go, if people want to learn more about what you do and what OpenOcean Robotics does, where can they go to find that information? Yeah, so you can go to our website, openoceanrobotics.com and just connect with me, I guess, on LinkedIn. And yeah, that's the best way to stay in touch and find out what we're doing. And I just want to thank you for having me on the show and thank your viewers for all their great questions. You definitely have a really technically-minded audience and it's fun to be able to share our story with people like that. Perfect, all right. And if it wasn't for our viewers and our people that contribute to our show, we wouldn't be able to do what we do and bring to you every week. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much to all of these citizens of tomorrow that contribute to this show and make us able to bring on cool people like Julie. We're able to spin up tomorrow's steam and down the road, maybe we will have tomorrow's oceans. Maybe we can pick up one of these drones and start live streaming from the ocean to 24 seven. If you'd like to contribute, head on over to patreon.com slash T-M-R-O or you can even use YouTube now youtube.com slash T-M-R-O slash join. So that's gonna wrap up our tomorrow's steam show this month and until next time, keep on discovering.