Category: UNCATEGORIZED

Getting to space isn’t as difficult as it used to be, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Relativity Space aims to vastly simplify the incredibly complex machine that is a launch vehicle by 3D-printing it from tip to tail fins. Co-founder and CEO Tim Ellis will be joining us at TC Sessions: Space on December 16 & 17 to discuss the company’s ambitious plans and upcoming first launch.

Relativity was founded in 2015 and since then has racked up a full slate of eager customers, making its Terran-1 rocket possibly the most pre-sold launch vehicle ever. And it’s not hard to see why. The 3D printing process that Ellis, with co-founder and CTO Jordan Noone, dreamed up while cutting their rocketry teeth at Blue Origin, is potentially revolutionary.

Launch vehicles are normally made up of thousands of parts, each of which must be manufactured, inspected, and fitted together individually. This not only makes building a rocket a long and complex process, but an expensive one, too.

Relativity’s approach is to 3D print everything it possibly can in its enormous “Stargate” printers, reducing the total number of parts by orders of magnitude — while, at least according to pre-flight tests, not affecting the final product’s performance. In fact, by removing the magnification of minor manufacturing defects and human error in assembly, reliability and performance can be significantly improved.

And if something goes wrong, well, you can break down the old one and print a new one in about two months, a fraction of the time it would take to build a new Delta IV or Falcon 9. Altogether it’s a very attractive proposition.

Of course, creating an entire new manufacturing process for rocketry from scratch is something of a major endeavor, but Relativity has done enough to convince both investors and customers that it is far from a mere science project. The company raised $35 million in 2018 and $140 million in 2019, and is preparing for its first orbital flight in 2021.

With next year shaping up to be the most important since the company was founded, Ellis will have a great deal to discuss, from the technology they use to the competition they’ll be going up against.

 

Get an early-bird ticket for just $125 until next week. And we have discounts available for groups, students, active military/government employees and for early-stage space startup founders who want to pitch and give their startup some extra visibility.

TVision is building what its team hopes will become the standard for measuring streaming viewership — and to accelerate those efforts, it’s raised $16 million in new funding.

The New York City startup started out by measuring traditional TV viewing, using webcams to determine whether viewers were actually paying attention to the ads. More recently, it’s launched a solution focused on connected TVs, where co-founder and CEO Yan Liu said there’s no standard measurement.

“What I’ve found is that in streaming, there’s no such a thing called a TV rating,” he said. “There’s no good currency, per se, in the industry.”

Partly, that’s because the large players like Netflix and Disney+ are subscription-based, rather than ad-supported, so they have little incentive to work with third-party measurement firms.

Liu also said that the measurement solutions currently in the market are largely limited to tags — an approach that allows advertisers to measure how widely their ads were seen, but doesn’t show them how their performance stacks up against industry benchmarks or competitors.

So instead of relying on tags, TVision has built up a panel of connected TV watchers. In some ways, this is a very old-fashioned approach — it’s the core of how Nielsen measures TV audiences — but Liu said it’s harder than it looks, which is why you don’t see many other ad measurement companies building their own.

He added that TVision (not to be confused with the T-Mobile streaming bundles of the same name) has built new technology that uses data like WiFi signals to determine whether an ad is being played on a streaming service or on linear TV.

And Liu said it’s doing all of this in a regulation-compliant and privacy-friendly way, preventing any personally identifiable information from being uploaded and ensuring that panelists understand what data their sharing.

TVision’s measurement platform is focused on connected TVs, rather than desktop/laptop computers or mobile devices. However, Liu said it can offer cross-platform insights through a partnership with Oracle’s Moat.

The startup is already working with customers like Pepsi, Anheuser-Busch, Hulu, AMC and Dentsu Aegis Network, and it has raised a total of $39 million in funding. The new round was led by SIG Asia Investments, an affiliate of global trading firm Susquehanna International Group. Existing investors Accomplice, Golden Ventures and Jump Capital also participated.

The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive it every Saturday in your inbox.

Welcome back to The Station, a newsletter dedicated to all the present and future ways people and packages move from Point A to Point B.

It was a busy week in the world of transportation, particularly around automated vehicle technology. Let’s get to it.

Email me anytime at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com to share thoughts, criticisms, offer up opinions or tips. You can also send a direct message to me at Twitter — @kirstenkorosec.

Micromobbin’

New York is one of the last big scooter markets yet to be decided. The city released October 30 a “Request for Expressions of Interest” for its pilot scooter program as well as a separate request for companies that provide ancillary services to the electric scooter industry, such as data aggregation and analysis, on-street charging and parking vendors, safe-riding training courses as well as scooter collection and impound services.

This officially kicks off the process to determine what companies will receive permits to operate in the city. It promises to be a competitive battle for one of the most coveted markets in the world. In the hours after the city released its RFEIs, I received a number of emails with statements from scooter companies, each one touting its experience, focus on safety and business strategy.

Some important decisions from the city have yet to be determined, or at least shared with the public such as exactly where the scooters will be allowed and what requirements will be placed on the companies that want to operate there. We know Manhattan is out as scooters are not allowed. That leaves four other boroughs, including Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens and Staten Island.

Meanwhile, in the ebike world …

Harley-Davidson announced that it has spun out a new business dedicated to electric bicycles and plans to bring its first line of products to market in spring 2021.

The pedal assist electric bicycle company is being launched amid a booming e-bike industry fueled by growing demand in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The global e-bicycle market was estimated to be over $15 billion in 2019 and projected to grow at an annual rate of more than 6% from 2020 to 2025. The demand is there; might this be how Harley-Davidson connects with the next-generation of customers?

The new business, called Serial 1 Cycle Company, started as a project within the motorcycle manufacturer’s product development center. The name comes from “Serial Number One,” the nickname for Harley-Davidson’s oldest-known motorcycle.

Deal of the week

Fisker Inc. became the latest in a group of speculative electric vehicle startups to go public via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company. Fisker had announced back in July — and right after raising $50 milion from investors — that it had reached an agreement to merge with Spartan Energy Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company sponsored by an affiliate of Apollo Global Management Inc.

The merger closed this week and Fisker made its debut on the New York Stock Exchange. Its first day of trading was Friday and pop went the shares, closing up 13%. It’s important to note that Fisker isn’t generating any revenue and doesn’t have a vehicle in production yet, although it did recently lock in a manufacturing agreement with Magna to build its first vehicle, the Ocean SUV. Fisker has said it will begin to deliver the Ocean SUV in 2022.

Henrik Fisker, the famous car designer and founder of the company, tweeted this week figures on reservations of the Ocean, which he pegged at 8,871. My big questions are how many vehicles does Fisker need to make and sell to break even, or dare I say, turn a profit? Is 9,000 vehicles enough? And will these reservations convert into actual sales? (a screenshot below of Fisker’s reservation figures)

 

Other deals that caught our attention … 

Continental took a minority stake into lidar develop Aeye. The companies didn’t disclose what “minority stake” means. However, the folks at Aeye were able to say that its the company’s largest Tier 1 investor to-date, and it’s a multi-faceted partnership that brings together a joint team of about 300 lidar engineers to develop and industrialize the long-range lidar product. The investment follows news that Aeye has appointed its president Blair LaCorte to the CEO position. Jon Lauckner, formerly CTO at GM, Dr. Bernd Gottschalk, an automotive executive and consultant who served on Daimler AG’s board and is the founder and managing partner of automotive consultancy AutoValue,
Frank Petznick, the executive vice president of advanced driver assistance systems at Continental and Keith Dierkx, a longtime IBM executive, also joined Aeye’s advisory board last month.

Hermeus, a startup aiming to build a Mach 5 aircraft capable of making the trip from New York to London in just 90 minutes, raised $16 million in a Series A round led by Canaan Partners. Existing investors Khosla Ventures, Bling Capital and the Rise of the Rest Seed Fund also participated in the round.

Outrider, a startup that developed a system of autonomous yard trucks, has raised $65 million in funding just eight months after coming out of stealth. The Series B round was led by Koch Disruptive Technologies and brings its total funding raised to $118 million. Other existing investors increased their investments, including NEA, 8VC and Prologis Ventures. New investors included Henry Crown and Company and Evolv Ventures.

Root Inc., the Ohio-based auto insurance platform, raised $724 million through its U.S. initial public offering. The company sold 24.2 million shares at $27 each — above the marketed range of $22 to $25 a share. The company also raised $500 million through sales of common shares to Dragoneer Investment Group and Silver Lake, according to an SEC filing.

Ryder System, the shipping, logistics, and truck rental company, launched a $50 million venture fund. TechCrunch’s Jonathan Shieber digs into why.

WiTricity closed a $34 million investment round led by Stage 1 Ventures with participation from Air Waves Wireless Electricity and a strategic investment by Mitsubishi Corporation through its U.S. subsidiary, Mitsubishi Corporation (Americas). WiTricity said the funds will be used to continue wireless power platform development, expand its intellectual property portfolio, and capitalize on the commercial momentum for wireless charging for electric vehicles.

A little bird

Typically, my “little bird” section is dedicated to vetted and multi-sourced tidbits that have yet to be reported out. This week is a bit different. I’m going to tap into my experience of reporting on and observing the AV industry, throw in a little reading of the Twitter tea leaves and make a prediction of what I believe is going to be one of the more interesting partnerships.

My big prediction in 2020 is. …. automated vehicle technology startup Voyage and electric vehicle startup and newly public company Canoo will partner on a vehicle. There I said it. Done. How could I dare be so bold? Let’s just say I’ve seen lots of love between Voyage and Canoo; to me it seems like more than just admiration. ;D

In actual publicly announced news, Voyage said it is teaming up with First Transit to deploy and operate robotaxis in communities like The Villages. Voyage has been testing and giving rides (with a human safety driver behind the wheel) in the senior community the Villages for some time now. Meanwhile, First Transit has six decades of experience as a transportation company.

Oliver Cameron, founder and CEO of Voyage, explained why the company partnered with First Transit in a recent tweet (there’s also a blog post). He wrote, “Robotaxis are a new business in many ways, but many of the challenges within have already been solved by tried-and-tested players (like  @FirstTransit). So, why not partner instead of reinventing the wheel?”

Expect more partnerships between the companies developing the technology and those that have experience in transportation operations. We saw another example of these kind of AV-operator partnerships this week. Motional, the Hyundai-Aptiv joint venture, and on-demand shuttle startup Via announced plans to launch a shared robotaxi service for the public in a U.S. city in the first half of 2021. The companies said the aim is to develop a “blueprint” for on-demand shared robotaxis and learn how these driverless vehicles can be integrated into mass transit.

Waymo makes its safety case

While I was on vacation, Waymo dropped a massive amount of data on its autonomous vehicle operations in Phoenix, Arizona. This data dump offers insight into more than just the number of crashes — 18 — or near misses — 29 — over the past 20 months. It provides the first real detailed look at Waymo’s automated system and operations.

The company published two papers detailing its safety methodologies and readiness as well as public road safety performance data, which analyzes the miles Waymo has driven on public roads in Arizona. The first paper digs into its three layered approach to safety, which includes the hardware, the automated driving system behavior and operations.

I’m still reading through the papers and will add more thoughts on this soon, but in the meantime here are my two big takeaways.

1. Waymo is finally providing a detailed answer to questions I have asked the company, including its CTO Dmitri Dolgov, which is “how safe is safe enough?” and “how do you know when it is safe enough?”
2. Automated vehicle technology companies are starting to compete on transparency.

Notable reads and other tidbits

Here are a few other items were noting.

Daimler Trucks and Waymo announced a partnership to build an autonomous version of the Freightliner Cascadia truck. This is Waymo’s first deal in the freight business. Then a few days later, Daimler Trucks announced it had invested in lidar developer Luminar as part of a broader partnership to produce autonomous trucks capable of navigating highways without a human driver behind the wheel.

These deals are the latest action by the German manufacturer to move away from robotaxis and shared mobility and instead focus on how automated vehicle technology can be applied to freight.

Grab and Marriott International announced a partnership that will cover the hospitality giant’s dining businesses in six Southeast Asian countries: Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand. Instead of room bookings, the Marriott International deal with Grab focuses on about 600 restaurants and bars at its properties in the six Southeast Asian countries, which will start being added to GrabFood’s on-demand delivery platform in November.

Postmates is now rolling out what could be the biggest update to the company’s service in a long time. The company is adding a retail option for users — starting in Los Angeles — to shop local stores and for local merchants to set up a virtual on-demand storefront in the app. Postmates users will be able to shop local merchants listed in the company’s new retail tab in the Postmates app called, appropriately, “Shop.”

Scott Painter, the founder of used-vehicle subscription service Fair, has been working quietly to raise money and launch a new software-as-a-service platform to help subscription providers achieve scale and become profitable, Automotive News reported. Painter stepped down as Fair’s CEO last year. His new company will be called NextCar.

Tesla raised the price of its FSD software (short for “full self-driving, and no it’s not self driving) to $10,000. The FSD package, which owners can opt for, has been steadily rising over the past year. The price increase comes just a few days after the company started to roll out a beta version of the software update. To be clear, FSD is not what the industry or even the federal agency NHTSA defines as Level 4 autonomy per standards defined by SAE International. Tesla vehicles with FSD require supervision at all times and a human driver must be ready to take over — and if you’ve seen any of the videos, welp yeah they need to take over. Level 4 under SAE standards require no driver intervention in certain conditions.

Uber said it has received more than 8,500 demands for arbitration as a result of it ditching delivery fees for some Black-owned restaurants via Uber Eats.

Uber is also facing another legal challenge in Europe related to algorithmic decision making. The App Drivers & Couriers Union (ADCU) has filed a case with a court in the Netherlands seeking to challenge the ride hailing company’s practice of ‘robo-firing’ — aka the use of automated systems to identify fraudulent activity and terminate drivers based on that analysis.

The last few quarters did not play out as as expected for venture capitalists or entrepreneurs; instead of a pandemic-fueled recession that cauterized the flow of private investment into startups, the economic shifts brought on by COVID-19 have given many companies a tailwind.

Venture capitalists ramped up their spend in Q2 and Q3, pushing private investment totals higher as software demand shot up as work went remote, e-commerce boomed and schools shuttered.

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The startup rebound is omnipresent around Silicon Valley: startups are raising fresh capital amidst a pandemic — and then raising again (and again). Even startups directly impacted by COVID-19 are seeing green shoots, while local entrepreneurial scenes are growing as investors learn to write checks over Zoom.

But, while that’s a fortuitous narrative, it’s not the full story. Data from a variety of sources collated by TechCrunch shows that early-stage female founders have been disproportionately hurt by the pandemic’s impact.

The Exchange touched on this topic a few weeks ago, noting that “number of rounds raised by female-founded and co-founded companies fell year-over-year, with dollars invested in those rounds collapsing to 2017-era levels.” Other data indicated that the pandemic was landing more heavily on the shoulders of women than men, causing them to delay entrepreneurial plans.

This morning, The Exchange is fleshing out its understanding of the changing VC market for female founders, leaning on information collected by the FLIK Female Founders Report, PitchBook, January Ventures and a report from Balloon on the changes in the venture and startups three years after the #MeToo hashtag spurred a global conversation about representation.

A VC rebound

The pandemic’s bite was felt in the second quarter when, if one subtracted the capital raised by Reliance Jio, VC investments fell by 9% compared to Q1 2020, and 23% compared to the year-ago second quarter.

In the third quarter, things turned around. North American startups raised $37 billion and Asian startups raised $24 billion, while European startups raised $9 billion. As The Exchange reported, “Asia’s result was its best since at least Q4 2018, as far back as our dataset goes. Europe’s total tied its high-water mark set in Q2 2019,” adding that “as a combined pair, venture capital outside North America might have just had its best quarter in years, if not ever.”

From fear in late Q1, to a middling Q2, to a boom in Q3. It was an impressive comeback. For some.

It was barely a month ago we began hearing rumors that Twilio was interested in acquiring Segment. The $3.2 billion deal was officially announced three weeks ago, and this morning the communications API company announced that the deal had closed, astonishingly fast for an acquisition of this size.

While we can’t know for sure, the speed with which the deal closed could suggest that it was in the works longer than we had known, and when we began hearing rumors of the acquisition, it could have already been signed, sealed and delivered. In addition, the fact that Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson and Segment CEO Peter Reinhardt knew one another before coming to terms might have helped accelerate the process.

Regardless, the two companies are a nice fit. Both deal with the API economy, providing a set of tools to help developers easily add a particular set of functions to their applications. For Twilio, that’s a set of communications APIs, while Segment focuses on customer data.

When you pull the two sets of tooling together, and combine that with Twilio’s 2018 SendGrid acquisition, you can see the possibility to build more complete applications for interacting with customers at every level including basic communications like video, SMS and audio from Twilio, as well as customer data from Segment and customized emails and ads based on those interactions from SendGrid.

As companies increasingly focus on digital engagement, especially in the midst of a pandemic, Twilio’s Lawson believes the biggest roadblock to this type of engagement has been that data has been locked in silos, precisely the kind of problem that Segment has been attacking.

“With the addition of Segment, Twilio’s Customer Engagement Platform now enables companies to both understand their customer and engage with them digitally — the combination is key to building great digital experiences,” Lawson said in a statement.

In a recent post looking at the reasoning behind the deal, Brent Leary, founder and principal analyst at CRM Essentials saw it this way: “This move allows Twilio to impact the data-insight-interaction-experience transformation process by removing friction from developers using their platform,” Leary explained.

With the deal closed, Segment will become a division of Twilio. Reinhardt will continue to be CEO, and will report directly to Lawson.

Ad-supported streaming news platform Haystack News is announcing a significant expansion ahead of U.S. Election Day. The company this morning introduced sixteen 24/7 live streaming news channels, including ABC News Live, CBSN, Al Jazeera, Euronews, Newsmax, Yahoo Finance and several more live local news broadcast stations across the U.S.

These are the first live news channels Haystack News has added to its previously video-on-demand (VOD) only news service.

The expansion follows another recent update to Haystack News that brought its service to over 350 total news sources, thanks to the addition of Fox owned-and-operated local stations. This change allowed Haystack News to reach 100% of the top 30 DMAs (designated market areas).

With today’s update, Haystack News aims to become a one-stop shop for live Election Night coverage, as well  — particularly for cord cutters looking for a service offering a combination of both national and local news coverage.

Haystack News has particularly benefited from the rapid shift to over-the-top streaming and rise of cord cutting.

Earlier this year, the company rebranded from Haystack TV to Haystack News to better reflect its position as a destination for ad-supported video news coverage. And in June, Haystack News reported record growth for its service with “millions” of new users signing up year-to-date, and 145% audience growth year-over-year. It also said the app was on pace to more than double usage in 2020, exceeding millions of hours monthly.

As part of its rebrand, Haystack News updated its app’s user interface and rolled out Newsline — a personalized and dynamic news TV ticker.

Today, Haystack News tells us the company has doubled its net new users for each of the past five years and that number has reached about 3 million users for 2020.

It also offered a new data point, noting for the first time that Haystack News has surpassed 2 billion minutes of news content consumed in 2020.

As a free service, Haystack News is supported through advertising, but claims its ad load is less than of traditional TV. This makes the service appealing to cord cutters in particular, who may have lost access to TV news when they dropped their traditional pay TV subscription and are looking for a free replacement.

While there are a number of ways to access streaming news from a smart TV or streaming media device, Haystack News’ advantage is that it now, as of this update, offers a variety of content — including both on-demand and live streaming news, and both national and local news coverage.

However, the company tells us its larger competitive advantage will continue to be how it personalizes the news to the end users — a feature that will help to differentiate itself from other streaming rivals, it says.

Haystack News is offering across a range of smart TVs, including Hisense, LG, Samsung, Sony, TCL and Vizio Smart TVs, as well as on Amazon Fire TV, Android TV, Apple TV, Roku, and Android and iOS mobile devices. On the web, it’s available at haystack.tv.

To date, Haystack News has raised $6.5 million, including its most recent round of funding that closed in 2019. The service is backed by AltaIR Capital, the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), Stanford University’s StartX Fund, SVLinks, Uhuru Capital, and Zorlu Ventures.

As ever, launch title choices are likely to be a concern for gamers plunking down cash on a next-gen console. They can, however, take solace in the fact that the immensely popular battle royale title Fortnite will be available for both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S when those systems arrive a couple of days apart next week.

Publisher Epic Games has detailed what the titles will look like for the news systems. It notes in a release that, “the Fortnite builds on Xbox Series X/S and PS5 aren’t simply tweaked last-gen builds but new native ones to harness the power of the new consoles.” Existing players will be able to pick up where they left off on the new systems, while taking advantage of some of that shiny new hardware.

The improvements look pretty similar, whether you’re a Sony or Microsoft enthusiast. Both the Xbox Series X and PS5 versions sport 4K resolution at 60 frames a second, faster match loading, split screens with a 60 FPS rate and improved physics and visuals that include features like trees that respond to explosions and better looking weather effects. The Xbox series S also supports most of these things, but downgrades 4K video for 1080p.

The new Xbox and PlayStation arrive on November 10 and 12, respectively.

As ever, launch title choices are likely to be a concern for gamers plunking down cash on a next-gen console. They can, however, take solace in the fact that the immensely popular battle royale title Fortnite will be available for both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S when those systems arrive a couple of days apart next week.

Publisher Epic Games has detailed what the titles will look like for the news systems. It notes in a release that, “the Fortnite builds on Xbox Series X/S and PS5 aren’t simply tweaked last-gen builds but new native ones to harness the power of the new consoles.” Existing players will be able to pick up where they left off on the new systems, while taking advantage of some of that shiny new hardware.

The improvements look pretty similar, whether you’re a Sony or Microsoft enthusiast. Both the Xbox Series X and PS5 versions sport 4K resolution at 60 frames a second, faster match loading, split screens with a 60 FPS rate and improved physics and visuals that include features like trees that respond to explosions and better looking weather effects. The Xbox series S also supports most of these things, but downgrades 4K video for 1080p.

The new Xbox and PlayStation arrive on November 10 and 12, respectively.

MIT has developed a new navigation system designed for use underwater that could do for underwater wayfinding what GPS has done for travel on and above the surface. GPS doesn’t really penetrate underwater, because radio waves aren’t really water-friendly. It’s why you commonly see things like sonar employed on submarines, which emit sound waves and measure their reflection off of other underwater objects and surfaces. Typical sonar and other acoustic signalling methods are power-hungry, however – which is why MIT’s new battery-free system has so much potential.

GPS is also a relatively power-efficient technology, which is part of the reason it has done so much to transform how we get around, from in-car navigation to maps on smartphones. The limitations of current underwater navigation technology has meant that we typically need to use large, quick-to-deplete battery packs to power sound generation and transmission devices. MIT’s system would replace all that with a new type of battery-free acoustic navigation systems that sues signals already found in the environment rather than creating its own.

The system works by employing piezoelectric materials, which generate an electric charge when hit with mechanical stress, including the strain resulting from a sound wave impacting against them. Researchers created a way from these sensors to translate sound wave information into binary code, which they used to measure things like the temperature of the surrounding ocean or its salt content, but they theorized that it could also be used to figure out location information.

That’s more complicated than it might appear rat first, because sound reflects off of various surfaces underwater and travels back at often unpredictable angles. But the research team was actually able to account for this with an approach called ‘frequency hopping’ and collecting information across a range of different wavelentghts. This was effective in deep water, and now they’re working on making it more effective in the even noisier environment of shallow water.

Ultimately, the system and future versions that are based upon the same technology could enable future robotic submarine explorers to better map the ocean floor, and perform all kinds of automated monitoring and sub-sea navigation.

MIT has developed a new navigation system designed for use underwater that could do for underwater wayfinding what GPS has done for travel on and above the surface. GPS doesn’t really penetrate underwater, because radio waves aren’t really water-friendly. It’s why you commonly see things like sonar employed on submarines, which emit sound waves and measure their reflection off of other underwater objects and surfaces. Typical sonar and other acoustic signalling methods are power-hungry, however – which is why MIT’s new battery-free system has so much potential.

GPS is also a relatively power-efficient technology, which is part of the reason it has done so much to transform how we get around, from in-car navigation to maps on smartphones. The limitations of current underwater navigation technology has meant that we typically need to use large, quick-to-deplete battery packs to power sound generation and transmission devices. MIT’s system would replace all that with a new type of battery-free acoustic navigation systems that sues signals already found in the environment rather than creating its own.

The system works by employing piezoelectric materials, which generate an electric charge when hit with mechanical stress, including the strain resulting from a sound wave impacting against them. Researchers created a way from these sensors to translate sound wave information into binary code, which they used to measure things like the temperature of the surrounding ocean or its salt content, but they theorized that it could also be used to figure out location information.

That’s more complicated than it might appear rat first, because sound reflects off of various surfaces underwater and travels back at often unpredictable angles. But the research team was actually able to account for this with an approach called ‘frequency hopping’ and collecting information across a range of different wavelentghts. This was effective in deep water, and now they’re working on making it more effective in the even noisier environment of shallow water.

Ultimately, the system and future versions that are based upon the same technology could enable future robotic submarine explorers to better map the ocean floor, and perform all kinds of automated monitoring and sub-sea navigation.