Seaweed punches above its weight. The marine plant only takes over 0.1% of sea floor But it can be credited with supporting marine ecosystems of plants and fish, filtering ocean water, and sequestering considerable amounts of carbon. There is also seagrass. Being destroyedDue to climate change and other factors, global grasslands are declining by 7% each year. Ulysses Ecosystem Engineering Wants to restore it.
Ulysses’ autonomous robot can be loaded with seeds and programmed to go to specific areas of the ocean floor to plant seagrass. Akhil Vorakara, co-founder and CEO of San Francisco-based Ulysses, told TechCrunch that the robot he built has been able to speed up restoration 100 times faster than volunteers planting grass seeds by hand. . Cost of other robots.
Jamie Wedderburn, now CTO, got the idea for the company in early 2023 during a surf trip with friends on the west coast of Scotland. One of his friends volunteered a recent scary experience that involved planting seaweed on a particularly rough day. of Scottish weather. More than 40 volunteers painstakingly planted sea grass that was wiped out by the rough conditions.
Wedderburn was unaware of the importance of sea grass, and hearing this story sent him down the rabbit hole. He thought there must be a way to use technology to improve such processes. Wedderburn pitched the idea to Vorkara, who proceeded to fall down the same rabbit hole. The company’s other two co-founders, Colm O’Brien and Will O’Brien, had a similar reaction.
“I knew it would be fun right away,” Will O’Brien told TechCrunch. “Also, to have the opportunity to create a mission-driven company that works primarily in the oceans, and is really focused on nature and biodiversity, is just, as you know, very exciting for me as well. Growing up as a kid, my hero was Steve Irwin.
Vorkara said the team decided to solve the problem by building robots because, none of them had experience in marine biology, but they had experience building robots. They quickly created a 3D prototype that wasn’t waterproof and leaked when they used it, but it worked well enough to inject sesame seeds, so they could show that there there is something Once they were convinced, they turned to experts for help.
“None of us are marine biologists,” Vorkara said. From the top people working in seagrass restoration and making sure it wasn’t crazy. These people were very excited about what we were doing and willing to work with us.
Ulysses launched in early 2024 and has since raised nearly $1 million in funding from both private companies and government organizations. The startup has partnerships with several government agencies for large-scale restoration projects in places like Florida and Australia.
The startup is now emerging from stealth and announcing a $2 million pre-seed funding round led by Lowercarbon Capital with participation from VCs Superorganism and ReGen Ventures, in addition to angel investors. Vorakara said the startup will use the funds to bolster its five-person team by adding engineers and people focused on go-to-market strategies.
Time is on Ulysses’ side, as many governments are giving greater emphasis and urgency to restoring seagrass meadows. Earlier this year, the European Union approved a The new regulation By 2030 and 2050 the focus is on restoring a variety of habitats, particularly seagrass.
Vorakara said this month the company will test a new capability for the robot: being able to retrieve seeds from approved seagrass beds and then deliver those seeds where they are needed.
While seagrass is currently the company’s main focus, they think of it as a startup. Will O’Brien said the technology is truly autonomous drones connected to a central platform so it can expand into other areas such as coastal management, coastal security and other types of maintenance.
“The oceans are really this much-explored frontier of humanity,” O’Brien said. “There aren’t a lot of new technical solutions and that’s because it’s a very difficult domain, dealing with current, [it’s] When you have all these things, it’s not very forgiving. [We want to] Bring SpaceX’s level of innovation to this new domain here on Earth.”
There are other companies making underwater robots. Terradepth is one that has raised over $30 million in VC to focus on ocean floor mapping for both commercial and government targets. Eelume There is another one out of Norway that focuses on ocean exploration.
“In five years, we don’t just want to restore seagrass, we want to manage hundreds of kilometers of coastline,” Vorkara said. “We want to supercharge NOAA, the US Coast Guard, and everyone else working to serve and protect the ocean into a much more efficient manor.”
Credit : techcrunch.com
