Hey, SafeMode. Welcome to Hack to C.
I'm Kitty, and I'm here to give you a brief explainer
on what UUVs are and what their challenges are.
So essentially, a UUV is an unmanned underwater vehicle,
or as I like to say,
an unpersonned or uncrewed underwater vehicle.
Underneath the category of a UUV,
there are two central subtypes.
There's the AUV, the autonomous underwater vehicle,
and the ROV, the remotely operated vehicle.
And the key difference between these two
is one is a self-guided, self-contained system, the AUV,
and it makes its own decisions and completes its own tasks
without human guidance or interference.
The ROV, conversely, is usually a tethered system,
but either way, it's connected to a human
who's helping the machine complete its tasks
and go along its guidance.
Essentially, what we're talking about here
are maritime robots.
So why do we need maritime robots?
Well, most of it is about exploring
or extracting stuff from the ocean.
And what we know about humans and the ocean
is that if you put a human under the water
on a long enough timeline, they tend to die.
So the history of the development of technologies
for exploration and extraction
used to be about putting a suit around a human
or putting a crew inside some sort of undersea shelter
that would allow them to do the things they wanted to do.
And that timeline is quite long.
So what you're looking at in this image
is an atmospheric diving suit.
And that, I think, is an image from 2014.
But more interestingly, the submarine you're looking at,
what essentially looks like a barrel with a window on it,
that model is from the 1700s.
So the history of trying to extract
and explore the ocean is quite long.
The other thing that we tend to do under the ocean,
largely brought on by a number of world wars,
is we do tend to do fighting underneath the sea.
And what you're looking at here
is an example of an unmanned torpedo.
So the way this works is,
this person sits atop this torpedo,
and in front of this person is a timed warhead.
And what they do is they guide the torpedo to its location.
The driver then drives the manned torpedo
over near the enemy ship,
attaches the warhead,
and then drops and runs as,
or swims as fast as they can to get away.
So presumably, the people signing up for this job
probably drew the short straw.
But this is much of what drives the development,
at least for militaries, for the creation of a UUV,
because this is a high-risk environment.
So what we're asking to do at Hack the Sea
is for you guys to start thinking about ways
to create some battle bots.
And so I have three essential,
easier and harder design sets
that you want to start thinking about
if you want to play next year at DEFCON 29.
So the easier way to think about this is to tether.
And so if you wanted to engage in your battle,
and you wanted to tether your bot,
you certainly have a lot of access to power,
you certainly have a lot of access to data,
and your maneuver capability is higher.
But this is the easy model.
And in all honesty, I would be surprised
if we allowed people to operate tethered in this way.
The harder challenge,
and the one I think we want to see you guys do,
is the untethered, remotely operated robot.
But we will come out with guidance
on that challenge pretty soon.
But the problem with that untethered,
remotely operated robot is that under the water,
radio frequency doesn't work.
And so you're pretty much left with sound and maybe light.
And so good luck on that.
And we look forward to seeing what you come up with.
Another challenge that you want to think about
is where on the water do you want to be?
And we will have separate challenges for that.
But essentially there are three general positions.
There's your floaters, there's your swimmers,
and there's your bottom crawlers.
So your floaters will obviously have more access to light
and potentially communication.
Your bottom crawlers will be in their most austere position,
but they will at least be able to locate
where they are in the water
because they can touch the bottom.
And interestingly and quite challengingly,
there are your free swimmers,
and who even knows how you're going to figure out
how to orient yourself in that condition.
The other thing that you need to start thinking about
is how to power it.
So the way the military powers things,
particularly with submarines,
is either nuclear power or diesel-electric.
These are probably not two categories
you'll be allowed to use.
So I look forward to seeing what you guys come up with.
That is about it for my explainer on UUVs.
I didn't want to take it on too long,
but I do want to say that I know
that you see me wearing a bow tie,
and that bow tie is really because
I want to dedicate this talk to a friend,
a colleague, and a mentor, Will Bundy,
who passed away this last December.
He was a huge part of the Naval War College's
move toward innovation,
and he was a big proponent of thinking about
all sorts of unmanned autonomous systems.
And so I just wanted to say thanks,
and we miss you.
And now that that's done,
I figured I would have a little fun
at the back end of this video.
So I tried to think about how to
work in some sort of reference
and a tie between a cocktail and this video,
and I couldn't, so we're just gonna make a cocktail.
So what you're gonna need,
let me move my camera,
in order to make a Manhattan in the style
that I make a Manhattan,
is you're going to need some bourbon,
and you're going to need some vermouth,
you're gonna need some bitters,
some cherries, some ice,
and a way to stir it.
Let's give it a shot.
Okay, so I tend to make a pretty stiff Manhattan,
so I just want to warn you in advance
if you follow my proportions,
be prepared for a stiff drink.
So you're gonna start with your bourbon.
I have here something I bought
from a local distillery, Filibuster.
It's a really nice standard bourbon.
They call it a whiskey
because they age it in a different way.
So you're gonna take two and a half parts of bourbon.
That's one,
two,
and a half.
You're gonna grab some vermouth,
a sweet vermouth.
I tend to use this thing called Carpano Antica,
which is considered an Amaro,
but that's fancy words.
Just get a sweet vermouth.
You'll learn over time what your favorites are,
and I do one part of that.
And then I'm gonna put my bitters in.
So I go with two different kinds of bitters.
I go with Angostura bitters,
and then a little bit of what's called Tiki bitters.
But really, you should play around as much
as you want with the bitters
until you find out whether you like
that deep, Christmassy flavor
or something more peppery,
but that's entirely up to you.
Put a little bit of this in here.
Healthy dash of Angostura bitters.
And the thing that I find that's most common
and most interesting and important
and also controversial,
is I believe strongly in allowing the flavor
of the cherry to come into the Manhattan.
And so often what I'll do when I buy my cherries,
is when I put the cherry in the drink.
There, see, this is a tethering cherry.
And I put just a little bit of the cherry juice
into the Manhattan to give it
just a little bit more cherry flavor.
In the real world, you should be stirring this
for somewhere 20 and 30 seconds
to get that temperature way down there
and to mix all the sugars together.
And I have forgotten my skimmer,
so I'll just put my finger down here.
That's how you make a Manhattan.
I will say for anybody who makes it all the way
to the end of this video,
hit me up at Defcon 29
and I will definitely help you make your own Manhattan.
I look forward to seeing you guys.
Hmm.
I look forward to seeing the battle bots.
Take care.
Thanks guys.
Turn this one off.
All right.
Let me turn my, no, my camera's on.
Hey guys, I wanted to say thank you.
I don't know why my camera's off.
Share my screen.
Who knows?
Anyway.
In all seriousness,
the challenge that we're dreaming up for Hack to See,
we're hoping to play out in 2021.
And the kind of challenge we're really looking for
is gonna be a hard,
just try and do this the hard way, right?
So there are gonna be two categories or classes
and I wanna talk a little bit about the swimmers
and then I'm gonna kick it over to Grant
and Grant is gonna talk a little bit
about the floaters.
And so, and while I'm doing this part of the preso,
feel free to text in some questions and answers.
And then after Grant talks a little bit
about his challenge on floaters,
I wanna kick it over in a very weird way.
You're gonna listen to him on my phone
because we can't get his audio enabled.
You're gonna listen to Dave talk about undersea IOT,
which is a growing commonality in the water.
So, okay, so here's the deal.
Next summer, we would like to see you folks
bring some bots to battle in the water.
The swimmer class is going to hopefully operate untethered.
Now, what does that mean?
That means that all of that,
all those advantages you have normally
by attaching a tether to your bot
so that it can go through an obstacle course
aren't gonna be there.
In particular, one of your greatest challenges
is going to be power,
and the other one is gonna be cons with your bot
to get it to go through a system.
You have all the opportunities you want.
If you wanna make it an AUV,
if you wanna make it autonomous, that's great,
but you gotta be careful, right?
Because it's an obstacle course.
So here are the general rules.
And then as we go forward,
we will be sending out specifics and guidelines.
But in general, we're hoping that your bot
will not be any bigger than checked luggage.
Ideally, it will be about the size of carry-on luggage.
Why did we do that?
We did that because we need you to get your bot to Vegas.
And in order to get your bot to Vegas,
it's gotta fit in some luggage.
Otherwise, you'll have a hell of a time getting it here.
So, checked luggage or carry-on luggage,
and we'll be more specific
about dimensions going on going forward.
I can automatically tell
that some of you are gonna wanna know,
can it fit in checked luggage and then I can unfold it?
Probably, but we'll figure it out.
Ideally, your bot's gonna be untethered for power.
We can talk later about whether or not
you can do a glider motion,
which is your bot can be underwater
and then come up for comms and then go back down again.
That's a valid design.
We'll think about it.
And again, we'll have clear guidelines here going forward.
We're thinking no more than $1,000 expenditures.
So, for those of you who are in makerspaces,
if you wanna put a team together
and start thinking about how to build this,
we really don't want you to be buying the Gucci set.
Cobble this together, make it work,
but do it the hard way.
And we're looking forward to seeing what you come up with.
Like I said, reach out to me or reach out to Hack the Sea.
We're at hackthesea.org.
And we will have, in the coming weeks,
the exact specifications and the gateways
and challenges to get us moving forward.
And if you have any other questions, I'm here.
But at this point, I'm gonna kick it over to Grant,
hopefully, and Grant will talk about the floater class.
Hello.
How are you?
All right.
Very excited to be here.
My name is Grant from Ocean Builders.
We are seasteaders.
We are the ones that are famous
for building a floating home in the water in Thailand.
Let me see if I can share my screen here.
Maybe that's not working.
Okay, maybe I can't share my screen.
Can you hear me?
Okay.
Okay.
Now something went wrong.
Okay, there it is.
Okay, so maybe I can't share my screen.
I was gonna show you some images
of the original seastead that we built in Thailand
that was very famously attacked by the Thai Navy
and ended up turning into a 10-day manhunt by the Thai Navy.
So it was a very interesting story.
Right now, a book is being written about it
as well as a screenplay for a movie.
So I'll talk more about that in my official talk tomorrow.
But I wanted to talk here about the challenge
we're going to be doing for a floater.
And for seasteading,
something that's really important for us
is to be able to have advanced warning
if there's big waves
or see what's actually going on in the area around us.
So we would like to have some notice
that there's big storms coming up and things like that.
And also another purpose is to be able
to observe the marine ecosystem around us.
So we want to build what we call an aqua boy,
like not a aqua boy, like a man,
but the actual boys that float in the water
and fill it with as many sensors
that can give us very useful information as possible.
So useful information can be water temperature,
pH levels, salinity, turbidity,
maybe even cameras connected and collect some data
or maybe even have machine learning.
So we'll be putting together the specifications
on exactly what all the details are.
We already have a bit of a cheat sheet pinned on our channel.
So you can go and download what we have already.
It's already there.
And we'll just give you some information
on the ideas that we have for what that is.
And we'll revise that as we go along here.
But we're pretty close to what we want
for the specifications of what would be there.
Ideally, we would have a maximum price and size, of course.
It should be something you should be able to bring to Vegas,
like Nina was saying,
you should be able to transport it there.
Otherwise, it doesn't make sense.
And it would look like,
it could look like something like a normal buoy
that you see floating in the water
that is kind of used for the red and green buoys
that you see for direction for boats
to navigate through some waterways.
It could be very similar to those in kind of shape.
And it can take, you know, can take under the water,
there would be a sensor array above the water.
There can be sensors in them as well.
So it's really unfortunate I can't share my screen,
but I'll maybe have that solved for the next talk.
Tomorrow.
And so I can go through a few of the details here
that we had.
There's also a link to join the challenge.
So if anyone here wants to look at the challenge
or look at some of the challenges we have
that we're going to be doing over the next year,
there's a link to a little survey signup form
where you can actually put your name and information
and kind of check off what your interests are.
And I think we have something very unique
because we are, like, this is Hack the Sea.
Everyone's here to find out how to hack the sea.
And this is, I think, a really interesting opportunity.
We're at the time where all these technologies now exist
for us to be able to do some really fantastic things
on the ocean.
And so we're out there doing it.
We're seasteaders.
We're actually building hardware.
We're actually making things happen.
People have been talking about building a city on the sea
for decades, but no one's actually done it.
So we're actually the first ones that are actually
putting hardware together and putting it in the water.
So we're really excited about being able to reach people
and reach out to a community of hackers
that likes building things
and is passionate about building things
and can help us to move everything forward.
We're really looking for kind of...
We're here mostly to do a call of action,
to say, okay, here's the opportunities.
The sea is wide open with all these incredible opportunities
of what we can do.
And I think now's a really amazing time
to actually bring all these things together,
do a call of action here to anyone that wants to participate
and help us do some really interesting things.
So we'll give a longer talk tomorrow.
We'll have some videos and presentations around the whole thing.
But I think we can probably pass it along back to Nina,
who's going to patch through with Dave on the phone.
Thanks a lot, Grant.
Yep, so we got Dave on the phone.
I do want to say, just as an addition to Grant's commentary here,
we aren't looking to have people bring their proprietary source stuff, right,
to the battle.
We're looking for open source hardware and software on this one, right?
Want to be able to share.
That's the way that works.
And so look for that to be a requirement in the battle guidelines.
And so, all right, so this is awkward as hell,
but I'm going to have Dave speak to you about the underwater IoT via my phone.
So I'm just going to...
I'm going to look to Grant to give me the thumbs up to see if he can hear Dave.
Dave, take it away.
Okay, can you hear me?
I hope I don't get too much feedback here.
So I'm kind of flying blind here.
I'll do the best that I can.
So I'm kind of flipping through my PowerPoint here.
I didn't actually hear Nina's video,
so I don't really know what she covered in terms of UUVs.
But, you know, just to sort of put things in context, I guess,
you know, UUVs, basically unmanned undersea vehicles, and, you know...
Dave, I'm going to cut you off.
Stand by one.
I'm going to cut you off.
We're getting way too much echo.
Here's what I'm going to do.
I think what we're going to do is we will...
I'm talking to the whole world now.
We're going to...
We may try and ask you to dial in tomorrow
and see if we can get you human plus status.
So for the universe out there,
unfortunately, Dave does not have human plus status.
And so the video and audio functions aren't working.
And so we'll have Imprezo out probably following Grant tomorrow,
but we'll see if we can spin up.
In the meantime, I'm going to take some questions
and I'll see if I can grab Dave's slides.
But just...
Yeah, and then just as a takeaway,
the undersea IOT stuff is actually really getting built out pretty aggressively.
Dave, what's the timeline you figure?
Within the next 10 years, next five or 10 years.
Okay.
As things progress with communications in the undersea,
that's the critical path.
Okay, Dave, we're going to have you...
We're going to get you added to tomorrow's jam.
So I'll do that on the back end and let me just take Q&A now.
So we'll talk to you in a couple of minutes, Dave.
Thanks so much for...
We'll get there.
Take it easy, man.
All right, Grant, if you want to unmute,
then we'll just take whatever questions come up.
Or we can just riff until then.
Well, I'm really excited to hear about the underwater IOT from Dave.
I'm glad to hear it.
So, okay, so why don't you and I talk about...
Why don't you and I talk about, like, why does it...
What's so hard about UUVs?
Like, why does that...
We have plenty of flying drones.
Like, what's the special challenge about being under the water?
And you can talk about this from the seasteading perspective
and I can talk about it from the naval perspective,
but I'll kick it off to you first.
Well, it's communication,
getting the data from whatever is...
When you're underwater, you can't send a radio signal above...
You know, it doesn't travel.
So that's the core problem.
So if we...
Go ahead.
If we can solve that, or if there's a solution
or some way of communicating, that would be incredible.
That could be a game changer.
So, I mean, I think this is...
This can't be stressed strongly enough
when I've been talking to roboticists who do undersea stuff.
One of the core challenges
and why people are talking about going autonomous with their robots
is this problem of communication.
So for those folks who don't play around in the water stuff,
radio frequency, the way in which comms work,
wireless comms, you know, the way in which our drones fly,
that is not a thing you get to do under the water.
You're left with two sources of signals under the water,
unless you count Dave's undersea IOT.
But you're really looking at light and sonar.
Grant, do you know of any other ways besides light and sonar?
Sound and light?
No.
Yeah, I'm not either.
So I'm curious to see what Dave has to see about an undersea IOT.
But really, so now you're talking about a bot
that is either working on delayed comms,
or if you're going to do light,
you got to worry about some other problems.
And so there are also additional issues,
which is the bathymetry of the water.
So how deep is it?
You get different pressure, the farther you go down,
you get different resistance on the hull itself.
Grant, are you familiar at all what happens
when you put a lithium ion battery
encased in a small shell and put it underwater?
No, I haven't really researched much on...
And if the battery off-gases, what do you have then?
You have a pipeline.
So the other problem we're going to deal with
in that UUV category is power.
And so this is a very serious issue,
that even if you get a really good lithium ion battery
in that bot, and it's operating autonomously underwater,
now you have to worry about whether or not
the encasement, the shell, is secure enough
so as to prevent a serious problem with that.
The other way you could do it is you could try
and create some floater that follows along.
But again, this is really up to the hackers to figure out.
But we're really going to try and push you guys
on the edges of how much power can you pack
into one of those things and make it operate untethered?
And how are you going to get it to communicate?
And by the way, if you get really smart ways
to communicate...
I'm just assuming other people are going to be messing
with you too.
I could be wrong about that, but I'm guessing they're gonna.
So the undersea problem is a real one.
The other problem that we're talking about
for swimmers is orientation.
So for bottom-crawling bots,
they've got the ground they can orient, right?
So now they're left with four directions,
forward, back, left, and right.
Similarly for floaters, you're going to be
on the water surface, forward, back, left, and right.
But if you're a swimmer, you have two more dimensions
to worry about, and that's up-down.
So if you're thinking about trying to orient yourself
in the water, not only do you have to figure out
where you are with no real touch points,
but you've got six directions to worry about.
So again, I don't know how our hackers
are going to deal with it.
I don't know what they're going to do to solve their problem,
but I'm crossing my fingers for them.
Grant, do you want to talk about the floater class?
Um, yes.
So actually, now that you're mentioning it,
we talked with Brian, I talked with Brian
about a number of different possible ideas and challenges.
And we talked about having a stationary buoy
that collects data, sensor data.
And then we also talked about having a,
like a robo boat, basically, a robot boat that moves around.
And so for the, for the floater,
are we talking about the moving version or the stationary?
I, whichever one you're thinking about,
I mean, this is for you guys to build out.
Good luck.
All right, yeah, okay.
So then I think the simplest
and probably the best thing to start with
would be the stationary.
That's going to stay in one place.
So that is, for that it's,
that technology is really critical for us
because we would really like to know
what the conditions are in our area
and be able to put those stations in remote areas
and collect data before we even decide to ever go there.
So we can actually be collecting data
and see what the conditions are year round.
And if it's a hospitable place to put a seastead.
So it'll just be there collecting data
maybe for a year before we would actually move there.
Like we'd collect wave height data.
So we'd actually be able to collect the data
on whether the buoy was going up and down,
what the rate of going up and down is.
So we'll be able to see what kind of waves we have.
If we have really crazy out of control waves
or if we have a slow and steady,
very calm that you'd actually want to live in
because living in big waves is not necessarily fun to do.
Our homes are actually,
we've engineered the homes
so they actually float above the water.
So we're suspended on a pole
that is about two and a half meters above the wave area.
So that makes us very comfortable,
but still when it's really, really,
when the conditions are really wavy,
then it's still not nice to live in.
So being able to collect all that data
in advance is really good.
And we also really want to have clear data
that can show the current state of the environment
before we put a seastead in that area,
because we don't want to, three years from now,
cause any kind of damage
to the local marine environment.
We want to make sure that our homes,
we're actually engineering them
so that they can be eco-restorative and not damaging.
So for that, the more clear data we get as a reference,
then that really helps us out a lot.
Grant, I have a question from the audience,
but I wanted to do just a follow-on question
to what you're talking about,
which is, is there a specific sort of climatological limit
to where you're seasteading?
What, I mean, is there, you were talking about Thailand,
which is a pretty tremendous space,
but are there places where you're like,
this is just a terrible idea
or the technology is not there yet?
Is there an optimal zone for seasteading?
Yes, there is.
We are in Panama right now,
and that is pretty much the optimal location to start
because Panama is outside of the hurricane zone.
There's a, I guess, seven or 800 kilometer band
around the center of the earth, around the equator,
where you don't have hurricanes,
just because of the way the Coriolis effect
of the earth works.
You just can't get hurricanes in that area.
So that's an ideal place to start
because we don't have to worry about moving our home
every year when the hurricane season starts again.
So that's an ideal area.
Obviously, a lot of people like being in warm,
tropical, beautiful areas,
and Panama has a lot of beautiful, untouched,
green, jungly areas that are beautiful.
And having your seastead close to land,
so you have beautiful view of the mountains
and the greeneries, it's really nice.
So that kind of environment's really ideal
versus putting it in the North Sea,
in the Arctic somewhere,
or someplace really cold with 100 foot waves.
That's definitely someplace you don't want to be.
We can engineer them for different conditions.
Like our base of our seastead is actually built
in the same base as a, like an oil rig.
So we have these deep spars,
which are poles that go deep into the water
that have, that create the buoyancy.
And then you have very heavy weight far below them,
below the spar, and that gives you a lot of stability.
So we have buoyancy as well as stability.
And then we can just scale that up to something
the size of an oil rig,
which can be in pretty nasty conditions,
but we, it's probably some place you don't want to live.
Okay, so the question that came in is,
do we see, are we aware of rovers or bots
that use VR, virtual reality vision,
navigation or virtual reality vision for operators?
Do you see any advantage in that,
or are more traditional methods
of computer vision more useful?
So this is a question about how the bot
understands the environment that it's in.
Grant, do you have any early thoughts on that?
And then I will dial through my mental Rolodex
and try and remember a time for the Navy.
Go ahead.
I think that would be the ideal condition
for us to have as far as giving people
a really good idea of what living on the water can be like,
but actually like being able to have them
either remotely or onsite,
where they can actually put on a headset
and like swim through the water
and see underneath the water and see what's going on.
If we could give that kind of experience
to people either remotely or onsite,
that they could actually experience it in that way,
that would give a dimension
that people haven't really had before
and to be super interactive
and be able to explore the area.
And so from a tourist kind of point of view,
or to get people kind of introduced
to this whole new way of living and being,
which is totally foreign to most people living on the ocean.
That's a big step for most people.
But if you can kind of have those baby steps
to give them a little vision
of some pretty incredible sights
that you wouldn't normally see,
that would be really, really fantastic.
Yeah, so Grant, I agree.
Like I think really, particularly for tourism,
getting people to sort of buy in
and understand what it's like to be down there.
I mean, there's something...
We are human, right?
There's something compelling.
We are sense animals.
And if you can get more sense
that a human can understand down there,
that is super helpful.
I will admit that to my knowledge,
Navy, who is not particularly interested in human sense,
but is more interested in sort of targeting,
fixing, tracking,
their challenge set is already super hard.
So for instance,
so if you're a big Navy asset
and somebody has fired something at you
from far, far away under the water,
like your biggest concern
is by the time you figured out where it is,
if it has any self-guiding capabilities,
then you're gonna try and counterfeit,
that gets military really fast.
You're gonna try and counter fire,
but you have to try and guess where it's gonna be.
And so a lot of that stuff isn't really VR relevant.
Navy is really thinking about
how do I stop someone from hitting me?
Really, 99% of Navy's question is
how do I avoid getting struck by something?
And so, but I love the question about VR
because I think it makes me think
that we're not thinking broadly enough in the Navy
about the way to onboard these new capabilities.
Grant, I have another question for you, if you don't mind.
Sure.
Okay, so it says,
do the homes have any built-in capability
to collect data from the environment around them?
So like, not just sort of like something you,
but like in and of itself,
built into the infrastructure of the seastead itself.
Yes, we're building as many sensors as we can into homes
to make them really,
we want to make them smartest home on the sea.
Well, they will be because there's not a lot of smart,
really smart homes on the sea
because we're the only ones building.
So first level, we have a weather sensor that's on the roof
that detects lightning strikes and detects UV,
the wind direction and a whole host of data,
humidity, temperature, barometric pressure.
And so there's a long list of things
that it collects right from there.
We will have sensors inside that will detect movement
because we want to be able to chart what the movement's like
if we are getting,
and say, if you're away from your home for a while
and then your home starts moving around for some reason,
we would like to be able to give you an alert.
Maybe there's a big storm coming
and you can call your neighbor
and ask him to close the doors or something
or close the windows or whatever.
Or you can just do it remotely from your handheld,
from your phone.
So we're building a lot of sensors like that.
I can't even, there's gonna be standard sensors,
but environmental sensors, we'll have as many as we can.
We would like to be able to detect the temperature
of the water at different levels going down.
We'd like to be able to turn each home
basically into research station
and document the environment, the marine environment we're in
because we're not just trying to make homes on the water.
We're trying to make homes that are a positive contribution
to the environment.
So part of doing that is to be able to assess
what the environment is like
and if we're improving it or not improving it.
So we want to measure the turbidity, the alkalinity,
the pH and all the same thing and other factors.
So we can see if there's more life after they've,
our homes have been in the water for a couple of years
or a couple of months or whatever.
When we had our home in Thailand
after only two months of being in the water,
it went from being like a desert basically under the water,
which most of the water, most of the ocean is a desert
when you get far away from the coast.
And we're 13 miles away from the coast.
So in that case, after two months,
we went from having nothing around
to having thousands and thousands of fish.
So we like having that kind of success story
and we'd like to be able to reproduce that.
So we're gonna try to use sensors
to collect as much data as we can.
So this is a, I mean, so the, so sorry,
I don't want to make this super military,
but please forgive me, Grant.
It's, you know, I have to translate
for the war types of us out here.
So you're talking about an ISR environment
and where all that data is going.
And I wonder what, so from a person
who doesn't want everything to be about the military,
but knows once the military gets a hold of something,
they're gonna make it about the military.
It's just, it's an interesting side effect of that mindset.
Do you have any security concerns
about the data that you're collecting
being used against the countries where your homesteads are?
That's a terrible, I'm super sorry I had to ask it.
I'm sorry.
Yeah, no security is an issue.
Come on.
Yeah, well, that's why I already spoke with Brian
a couple, maybe a week ago about having all of our systems
have security threat analysis done on,
even each of our sensors,
all the hardware we're going to be using,
all of our systems,
and then just have people try to hack it
and see what they can come up with
and try to patch as many of those things as possible.
So we're going to, what we want to do
is to be able to have all this data
and you can get your Seastead
and not put all this stuff in it,
but I would like to be able to collect data
and we can, as if you're an owner of the Seastead,
you can have the option of having that data
where that's available to you and only you,
and that's encrypted,
and you're the only one that has access to it
and we'll probably put it on a blockchain
or whatever makes sense to,
and then you can release the data
if you want to share that with anyone else.
If you want to share it with,
like you can share it with just yourself,
you can share it publicly,
or you could share it just with like a management company
that can see, okay, that the sensor at your house
is showing that your water levels are getting really low
and you need to, I don't know,
replace your something on your home
because it's at a critical level.
Or if your battery level's too low
and your power system's not going to be able to continue
and you're away, then we can come and help take care of that
or management company can come in and take care of that.
So there has to be, I think, different permission levels
for where your data's going to go
and there has to be really good testing
to make sure hackers have a hard time getting in,
as hard as possible.
Yeah, no, that's, I mean, it's interesting
because we live in an era
where seemingly innocuous information,
right, I mean, this is the big debate,
not to go super meta,
but this is the big debate about,
like, what's the harm in TikTok, right?
Like, what is the harm in,
we can just say a company,
but we can also say a country, right?
Both can be equally evil.
What is the harm in all of this
seemingly innocuous data being built up?
And so not to, and honestly,
everybody should tune in tomorrow
for Grant's talk on C7 specifically,
but just to sort of open the door a little bit,
what kinds of concerns do you have
about big data that you're collecting?
Like, have you thought through
what someone might use that stuff for?
I'm an optimist, so I always look at,
I always look towards the positive,
so I'm looking at what amazing things we can do,
because I genuinely, I'm not doing this
because I need to do another project.
I'm doing this because I love doing this,
and I want to do something that I think we can,
I think when we build homes on land,
we kind of destroy the land,
and, you know, clear cut the forest,
and that's not, you know, it's not a good,
we're not being a good citizen of the planet.
But I think there's, what I saw last year in Thailand,
with so much life all of a sudden just appearing
after just two months, that gives us an opportunity
to actually be a good citizen of the planet.
So I'd like to, I see this as,
I always look at the ways of making an improvement
to the situation, and I think we can use data
to help improve the restoration of coral reefs in the world.
So I'm going to, I'm going to plus up,
because there's a question that's come through
a little bit further about the telemetry data
that you could collect passively from these seasteads.
And I'm going to ask it specifically
because folks are asking, and then,
and I realize we're going to run out of time here
in about 14 minutes, but, and you and I will again,
talk through and invite people to join us
in next year's bot challenge.
But the question again is,
are you guys thinking about this
from an educational standpoint?
Like this, the data you're collecting doesn't,
I mean, you guys are looking
to benefit the environment directly,
but I mean, is there like,
is there some sort of partnership or subsidies,
like educational institutes?
Like, are you trying to partner to try and,
and make all of this telemetry have effects
beyond just the seasteading element?
About two weeks ago,
we started reaching out to people
that we could partner with.
I basically have 150 projects,
like huge projects going on simultaneously.
So, and it's all filtering through me at the moment.
So that's a little bit-
This is how we know you're a hacker.
Go ahead.
So I'm trying to bring more people on board
to help distribute some of the research
because there's just so much I can do.
But I would, yeah, there's a lot filtering
through me right now.
So we need to get a better handle on that.
And then I think we'll be in a pretty good position
to make, to do some really good things with the data.
So I guess partners,
there's a lot of people we could partner with
and that's just another project
to find the right partners.
And I have started to, we have started to look,
we've started to reach out to find the right people
that would like to partner with us.
And we're open to, if anyone has any suggestions,
I'm all ears.
Just send it in the chat or on the Seasteading channel.
Cool. Thank you so much, Grant.
All right, so we're going to round this out.
Actually, StrikePod has a question for us
that I think we should probably address
or at least take seriously as we build out our guidelines.
He wants to know to what degree are COTS products allowed?
So consumer off the shelf products
in building either your floater class or my swimmer class,
can we buy some local bot for 300 bucks
and then just repurpose it?
And does that stay within
our open source guidelines requirement?
And I realized that we're asking on the fly
because I know you and I were going to try
and sit down together and noodle out
exactly what kinds of limitations
we want to slap on these folks for next year.
But do you want to take a stab at COTS products?
And then I'll give my preliminary thoughts on that.
Yeah, I really want to have this done in the open source
and I guess if that interferes with that,
then that's like kind of kills it.
So if you're buying something off the shelf
and then modifying everything on top of that,
I don't think that would give enough
of a open source component.
Maybe if there's a consumer part
that, I don't know, is maybe like, I don't know,
an off-the-shelf robot arm or something
that could be plugged into the whole system
and that wasn't an essential part of it,
then I guess that could be acceptable.
But if you're just modifying
an off-the-shelf aquatic drone,
then I don't think that would be...
I think if the guts, the core guts of it
are commercial and closed source,
then I think that would be a killer.
I think I agree.
Again, we're doing this on the fly as we dream this up.
And before we wrap out, I'm going to have Grant
remind us of what he thinks the early speculation,
what the floater class requirements are going to be.
And I know he's been working up a sheet on that.
But I am inclined to say
that if you want to use a COTS product
for pricing components, right?
So we have $1,000 limit on the swimmer class.
If you want to use a COTS product,
you at a minimum need to show me
that it has been reverse engineered
such that you are really economizing on costs
for private production of a servo,
but you would at least have to prove to me
that like, no, look, it's been reverse engineered
and those reverse engineered components are available,
open source, and so a person can sit down and do that stuff.
I am just cutting to the chase.
And I think that's fair,
but you have to show me that it was the case.
And I think that, again, so for the swimmer class,
we're going to have some gates
that people are going to have to go through
throughout the year,
because we want to make sure that
by the time we get to the pool in Las Vegas,
we have got some, you know,
no shit, seriously interesting bots.
They might be dumb, right?
They might be running into the wall repeatedly,
but then we've got some bots that, you know,
at a minimum, like our pool maker gear thought through
and are going to behave in interesting ways
that we had not anticipated.
Then part of the fun of the hackerspace
is just giving it a shot
and seeing all the variation that emerges.
One of the most beautiful parts of this community
is that everybody's teaching us
different ways to go at a question.
So we're not trying to close that down.
In fact, I'm trying to open it up,
which is why we don't want this to be about COTS, right?
We don't want this to be about,
we want you to show us all the ways
in which you're coming at,
I don't want you to tether for power
in a curiously interesting way.
You know, there's a lot of urine in Vegas pools.
Maybe you can use that as a power source, hard to say.
But you know, sort of speculate
and then think your way through it.
If we have any luck,
we will be able to secure a Las Vegas pool to do this in.
And so, you know, really just try and get a tan a little bit
so that you don't die under the Vegas sun.
And okay, so Grant, I want you,
as we ramp out of the eight minutes left,
give me, again, just to recap for the folks,
give me the primary challenges,
the floater class are going to come up against.
What are the primary, you're like,
this, I think this is really the issue.
Well, the big piece of it would be
to be able to collect data and store it,
but also send it.
And sending a distance on the water
could be a little bit tricky,
could be a little bit challenging,
because we may not have a station nearby
where we can just, we're just sitting there
waiting for the data to come in.
But to be useful, we have to be able to collect it.
And some of these could be fairly remote
in areas that are hard to get to.
So it would be very advantageous
to have as long of a transmission period as possible.
I don't know how I will test that in Vegas in a pool.
Good luck.
Yeah, so maybe we'll have a team three miles away
and seeing if they can pick up the sensor data
from the pool, that could possibly work.
So that's going to be really important.
Being able to check wave height is really important.
Interesting, yes.
I'm sorry, I haven't been thinking about surface vehicles.
Oh, you're totally right.
Okay, go on, sorry.
It didn't mean to interrupt, duh.
All right, go ahead.
We would like to be able to know how big the waves are,
what the period between the waves is.
So all that data is really useful.
We'd like to find out if there's a way to find out
the direction of the waves from sensors.
And I was trying to figure out myself how I would do that.
And I haven't put too much thought into it,
but I haven't come up with the solution
on how to do that just with sensors,
unless we brought AI or machine learning in
and had cameras to be able to do that.
Oh, I have so many ideas right now.
Go on, sorry.
Come on, we need a flat surface and a couple levels
and you know, you know.
Sorry, go ahead.
Then, so just standard,
we can collect standard weather data as well.
Probably we'd want to know lightning data as well.
If there's a lot of lightning strikes in that area,
we might not love to be in that area
if there's a lot of lightning coming down in that area.
So that's a condition.
So we're going to see which are the most important items
for us to have on this list as a final specification.
Solar powered would be nice.
So they can last as long as possible
and we don't have to go out
and change the batteries every week.
If it could be continually charged, that would be ideal.
So those are, I think, some of the more important things.
And of course, collecting any kind of water data we can,
like pH or salinity, temperature, turbidity,
cameras under the water that can identify fish
with machine learning would be really cool as well.
Oh, interesting. Wow.
So that's, so honestly, that's going to be VR, right?
That is going to be, I mean, I don't,
I don't think anyone's got a,
I don't think anyone's got a massive database
of fish signatures.
I mean, maybe tuna, if you're lucky.
Gosh, I don't, yeah, that's really interesting.
I hadn't thought about that before,
but yeah, like what does a fish look like
and how is it not a plastic bag?
And interesting, interesting.
Okay. All right.
So from a naval perspective,
and you folks know me, like I don't have to talk.
I will talk from this perspective because I think,
because I think it's different,
because I think it's complete contrast
into what Grant's talking about.
And I love what Grant's talking about.
I think it's fascinating. It's amazing.
It's useful for the future.
But in contrast, right,
like what are some other kinds of challenges?
So Grant's talking about survival of a floater.
He's talking about persistence.
He's talking about integrity of the data long enough
so you can fetch it back.
And I think that all of those things also matter
when it comes to things like how do,
how does a Navy project power,
or at least protect vessels that are going along in the sea?
Like one of the real issues of play for Navy is,
for all Navies, not just the US Navy,
is how do we protect where so much
of the world's commerce comes from?
So for folks who don't know, right,
all the items, probably the vast majority of the items
that you have running around in your house
come to you via a boat.
They come via a ship.
They float on the surface.
And one of the things that Navies and Coast Guards
are required to do is ensure the safe passage
of these objects, right?
And if we're all impatient Amazon consumers,
then we want it now.
And so the question is, you know,
how do you prevent those kinds of delays?
How do you ensure freedom of navigation,
freedom of the sea?
So it's a Navy question.
For Navy, the biggest concerns are about following things.
The biggest concerns for the Navy are which of these,
we call them white, we call those white ships,
white ships being ships that aren't out there
with a military capacity.
They're there to, you know, bring tourists around
or they're there to move cargo from China to the US, right?
This is white.
So how do you tell the difference
between white and other forces?
How do you then, once you've identified
these other elements that could be doing terrible things
or might be trying to do terrible things,
how do you follow them in a meaningful way
without having to send out a ship
and literally follow it, right?
And so really the question for the floater's flimmer class
for us is about locating something almost passively, right?
From an ISR perspective, almost passively,
just being able to sort of map who's who in the zoo
and where are you heading this week?
And honestly, so Gary Kessler is gonna talk to you folks
actually in the next hour, I think, about hacking AIS.
And AIS is the system by which all ships voluntarily
share their data, their tracking data
as they transit the seas.
And there's a real reason to be concerned about that system.
And so we'll worry about that security
in the next session.
Anyway, so we're gonna say goodbye
because I think we're down to our last minute.
I love you all.
Talk to you all soon and I miss...
Go ahead, Grant, say goodbye.
Thank you, everyone.
I look forward to seeing you tomorrow on my talk.
I think it's at 10 o'clock in the morning.
Thanks, everybody.
Bye.