We know more about other planets than our own, and today, I want to show you a new type of robot designed to help us better understand our own planet. It belongs to a category known in the oceanographic community as an unmanned surface vehicle, or USV. And it uses no fuel. Instead, it relies on wind power for propulsion. And yet, it can sail around the globe for months at a time. So I want to share with you why we built it, and what it means for you.
我们对其他星球的认识 超过我们对地球的认识, 今天,我想给你们看看 一款新型机器人 研发这款机器人就是为了 增进我们对地球的认识。 海洋学界将其称为 无人水面艇,简称USV。 这种无人艇不用燃料。 而是利用风能来提供推进力。 凭借风能,这种无人艇 出行一次便能持续数月,游遍全球。 所以我想跟大家说说 我们打造这款无人艇的原因, 以及这款无人艇与你们的关联。
A few years ago, I was on a sailboat making its way across the Pacific, from San Francisco to Hawaii. I had just spent the past 10 years working nonstop, developing video games for hundreds of millions of users, and I wanted to take a step back and look at the big picture and get some much-needed thinking time. I was the navigator on board, and one evening, after a long session analyzing weather data and plotting our course, I came up on deck and saw this beautiful sunset. And a thought occurred to me: How much do we really know about our oceans? The Pacific was stretching all around me as far as the eye could see, and the waves were rocking our boat forcefully, a sort of constant reminder of its untold power. How much do we really know about our oceans? I decided to find out.
几年前,我乘坐一艘 跨太平洋帆船, 这艘帆船从旧金山出发 驶向夏威夷。 过去十年间,我夜以继日地工作, 为数百万名用户开发电子游戏, 我想退一步 看看世界形势 想要有一些思考的时间。 当时,我是船上的航海者, 一天晚上,我们分析了 很久的天气数据 绘制行进路线, 结束后,我来到甲板上 便看到了如此壮丽的日落景象。 我突然冒出了一个想法: 我们到底有多了解我们的海洋? 我目之所及,全是太平洋, 海浪剧烈地摇晃着我们的船只, 仿佛在不断地提醒我们: 海洋拥有巨大的力量。 我们到底有多了解我们的海洋? 我决定要一探究竟。
What I quickly learned is that we don't know very much. The first reason is just how vast oceans are, covering 70 percent of the planet, and yet we know they drive complex planetary systems like global weather, which affect all of us on a daily basis, sometimes dramatically. And yet, those activities are mostly invisible to us.
我最先发现的是 我们对海洋所知不多。 第一,因为海洋浩瀚无垠, 海洋面积占地球面积的70%, 我们也知道 海洋影响复杂的行星系统 比如全球天气, 天气与我们的日常生活息息相关, 有时也会对我们造成巨大的影响。 不过,大部分这些活动 人类都没有关注到。
Ocean data is scarce by any standard. Back on land, I had grown used to accessing lots of sensors -- billions of them, actually. But at sea, in situ data is scarce and expensive. Why? Because it relies on a small number of ships and buoys. How small a number was actually a great surprise. Our National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, better known as NOAA, only has 16 ships, and there are less than 200 buoys offshore globally. It is easy to understand why: the oceans are an unforgiving place, and to collect in situ data, you need a big ship, capable of carrying a vast amount of fuel and large crews, costing hundreds of millions of dollars each, or, big buoys tethered to the ocean floor with a four-mile-long cable and weighted down by a set of train wheels, which is both dangerous to deploy and expensive to maintain.
不管按什么标准来衡量 与海洋相关的数据都非常稀缺。 返回陆地之后 我逐渐习惯使用大量探测设备-- 实际上,多大数亿台设备。 但是,在海里,原地数据非常稀缺 而且采集成本高昂。 为什么呢?这是因为原地数据采集 依靠的是一些船只和浮标。 船只和浮标的数量之少 足以让你们大吃一惊。 美国国家海洋和大气管理局, 简称NOAA, 只有16艘船, 在全球海上投放的 浮标还不到200个。 其中的原因很好理解: 海洋变幻莫测, 要采集原地数据 就需要巨大的船只, 能装得下大量燃料 需要大量船员, 这样,每艘船都需要 耗资数亿美元, 或者需要栓到海底的大浮标 需要用四英里长的缆绳来栓 还要用火车车轮来加重固定, 这么做既危险, 维修费用又高
What about satellites, you might ask? Well, satellites are fantastic, and they have taught us so much about the big picture over the past few decades. However, the problem with satellites is they can only see through one micron of the surface of the ocean. They have relatively poor spatial and temporal resolution, and their signal needs to be corrected for cloud cover and land effects and other factors.
你们或许会问:卫星呢? 嗯,卫星非常了不起, 短短几十年 卫星就帮助我们 掌握了很多宏观情况。 然而,问题是卫星 只能看穿海平面一个微米。 卫星的时空分辨率相对较差, 而且卫星信号受到云层厚度和 地面效果的影响需要修正 还有其他因素。
So what is going on in the oceans? And what are we trying to measure? And how could a robot be of any use?
那大海里到底发生了什么呢? 我们想要测量什么呢? 机器人能发挥什么作用呢?
Let's zoom in on a small cube in the ocean. One of the key things we want to understand is the surface, because the surface, if you think about it, is the nexus of all air-sea interaction. It is the interface through which all energy and gases must flow. Our sun radiates energy, which is absorbed by oceans as heat and then partially released into the atmosphere. Gases in our atmosphere like CO2 get dissolved into our oceans. Actually, about 30 percent of all global CO2 gets absorbed. Plankton and microorganisms release oxygen into the atmosphere, so much so that every other breath you take comes from the ocean.
让我们放大画面来看看海洋一角。 对于海洋,我们想了解很多东西 其中之一便是海面, 你们想一下原因, 因为海面连接大气与海洋 两者相互作用。 海面是一切能量和 气体通过的界面。 太阳放射出的能量, 会被海洋当作热量吸收 一部分会热量又会 被释放到大气中。 大气中的气体(如二氧化碳) 被海洋吸收溶解。 实际上,海洋吸收了全球 30%左右的二氧化碳。 浮游生物和微生物 向大气中释放大量氧气, 所以你所呼吸的每两口氧气 都来自海洋。
Some of that heat generates evaporation, which creates clouds and then eventually leads to precipitation. And pressure gradients create surface wind, which moves the moisture through the atmosphere. Some of the heat radiates down into the deep ocean and gets stored in different layers, the ocean acting as some kind of planetary-scale boiler to store all that energy, which later might be released in short-term events like hurricanes or long-term phenomena like El Niño. These layers can get mixed up by vertical upwelling currents or horizontal currents, which are key in transporting heat from the tropics to the poles. And of course, there is marine life, occupying the largest ecosystem in volume on the planet, from microorganisms to fish to marine mammals, like seals, dolphins and whales.
大海吸收的一部分热量会蒸发 形成云朵, 最终变成雨水。 气压梯度又会促使形成地面风, 地面风会吹走大气中的水分。 一些热量会释放到海洋深处 储存在不同的深度, 大海就像一个行星尺度锅炉 储存着这些能量, 随后可能会通过短期活动, 如飓风 或长期现象,如厄尔尼诺, 来释放能量。 将热量输送到南北极的主要途经, 是这些能量会通过 上升流或者水平流 混合不同深度的能量。 当然,大海里有各种各样的生物, 构成地球上规模最大的生态系统, 有微生物、鱼、海洋哺乳动物, 如海狮、海豚、鲸。
But all of these are mostly invisible to us. The challenge in studying those ocean variables at scale is one of energy, the energy that it takes to deploy sensors into the deep ocean. And of course, many solutions have been tried -- from wave-actuated devices to surface drifters to sun-powered electrical drives -- each with their own compromises. Our team breakthrough came from an unlikely source -- the pursuit of the world speed record in a wind-powered land yacht. It took 10 years of research and development to come up with a novel wing concept that only uses three watts of power to control and yet can propel a vehicle all around the globe with seemingly unlimited autonomy. By adapting this wing concept into a marine vehicle, we had the genesis of an ocean drone.
但是,我们一般看不见这些生物。 要大规模研究这些我们 看不见的海洋生物, 有一个巨大的挑战, 与能源和精力相关。 即要把各种各样的探测设备 部署在海洋深处所需的能源和精力。 当然,人类尝试了许多解决方案-- 如靠波浪驱动的设备 海洋漂流浮标 太阳能供电的电气驱动 -- 每种方案都有其不足之处。 我们团队的突破点来源于 一个难以置信的想法-- 风力快艇车试图破世界纪录。 我们花了十年时间进行研发 才提出了一个新的机翼概念 三瓦电便足以控制这种机翼, 它却能推动设备游遍全球 拥有近乎无限的自主性。 我们将这一机翼概念 融合到海洋设备中, 借此首创了一台海洋无人机。
Now, these are larger than they appear. They are about 15 feet high, 23 feet long, seven feet deep. Think of them as surface satellites. They're laden with an array of science-grade sensors that measure all key variables, both oceanographic and atmospheric, and a live satellite link transmits this high-resolution data back to shore in real time. Our team has been hard at work over the past few years, conducting missions in some of the toughest ocean conditions on the planet, from the Arctic to the tropical Pacific. We have sailed all the way to the polar ice shelf. We have sailed into Atlantic hurricanes. We have rounded Cape Horn, and we have slalomed between the oil rigs of the Gulf of Mexico. This is one tough robot.
如今,这些无人机要比看起来的大。 高约4.6米,长约7米,深约2米。 把它们看作海面卫星。 这些无人机装满了各种 各样的科学级传感器 用于测量包括 海洋学变量和大气变量的 所有关键变量, 这些无人机还装有实时卫星链接 实时将高清数据 传输回陆地 过去几年,我们整个 团队都在辛勤工作, 在地球上一些海洋 条件最艰苦的地区 执行任务, 去过北极,也到过热带太平洋地区。 我们一路航行到极地冰架。 我们曾驶进大西洋飓风之中。 我们绕过了好望角, 我们穿梭过墨西哥湾的石油钻机。 这是一款彪悍的机器人。
Let me share with you recent work that we did around the Pribilof Islands. This is a small group of islands deep in the cold Bering Sea between the US and Russia. Now, the Bering Sea is the home of the walleye pollock, which is a whitefish you might not recognize, but you might likely have tasted if you enjoy fish sticks or surimi. Yes, surimi looks like crabmeat, but it's actually pollock. And the pollock fishery is the largest fishery in the nation, both in terms of value and volume -- about 3.1 billion pounds of fish caught every year.
现在我跟大家说说 我们最近在普里比洛夫 群岛的工作内容。 普里比洛夫群岛由一群小岛屿组成 是美俄之间白令海中的群岛。 如今,白眼狭鳕生存在白令海, 白眼狭鳕是一种白鲑 你们可能不认识, 但如果你们爱吃鱼条或者鱼糜的话 你们就很可能吃过白眼狭鳕。 的确,鱼糜看着像蟹肉 但实际上是白眼狭鳕。 此外,不管是从产值 还是从产量角度而言, 白眼狭鳕渔场都是美国最大的渔场-- 每年捕捞的白眼狭鳕重约141万吨。
So over the past few years, a fleet of ocean drones has been hard at work in the Bering Sea with the goal to help assess the size of the pollock fish stock. This helps improve the quota system that's used to manage the fishery and help prevent a collapse of the fish stock and protects this fragile ecosystem. Now, the drones survey the fishing ground using acoustics, i.e., a sonar. This sends a sound wave downwards, and then the reflection, the echo from the sound wave from the seabed or schools of fish, gives us an idea of what's happening below the surface. Our ocean drones are actually pretty good at this repetitive task, so they have been gridding the Bering Sea day in, day out.
因此,前几年,一批海洋无人机 在白令海辛勤工作 旨在帮助评估白眼狭鳕的存量规模。 以便改进捕捞配额制度 该制度用于妥善管理渔业资源 有助于预防鱼群存量崩溃, 保护这一脆弱的生态系统。 当前,无人机利用声音勘测渔场, 比如,声呐。 声呐向下发出声波, 来自海床或鱼群的 声波反射,产生回声 来自海床或鱼群的 声波反射,产生回声, 便能让我们知道海面 之下有什么样的情况。 实际上,我们的海洋无人机 非常擅长这份重复乏味的任务, 所以它们日日夜夜 在白令海上游来游去。
Now, the Pribilof Islands are also the home of a large colony of fur seals. In the 1950s, there were about two million individuals in that colony. Sadly, these days, the population has rapidly declined. There's less than 50 percent of that number left, and the population continues to fall rapidly. So to understand why, our science partner at the National Marine Mammal Laboratory has fitted a GPS tag on some of the mother seals, glued to their furs. And this tag measures location and depth and also has a really cool little camera that's triggered by sudden acceleration. Here is a movie taken by an artistically inclined seal, giving us unprecedented insight into an underwater hunt deep in the Arctic, and the shot of this pollock prey just seconds before it gets devoured.
现在,普里比洛夫群岛还居住着 一大群海狗。 20世纪50年代,该群岛 约有两百万只海狗。 不幸的是,如今海狗的数量骤减。 目前海狗的数量不足以前的一半, 而且数量还在不断减少。 为了明白其中的缘由, 我们的科学合作伙伴 美国国家海洋哺乳动物研究所 在一些海狗妈妈身上安装了GPS标签, 粘在它们的毛上。 这种标签能探测海狗 妈妈的位置和深度 还配有一个超炫酷的小摄像头 海狗妈妈突然加速 就能触发摄像头。 这个视频拍的是一只 优美游动的海狗, 这个视频让我们第一次欣赏到了 北极深海中的追捕大戏, 这个视频捕捉到了 这只沦为猎物的狭鳕 几秒钟后,这只狭鳕被海狗吞噬。
Now, doing work in the Arctic is very tough, even for a robot. They had to survive a snowstorm in August and interferences from bystanders -- that little spotted seal enjoying a ride.
目前,在北极开展工作极其艰难, 机器人也不例外。 它们要承受住八月的暴风雪 和外来的干扰-- 那只小斑点海狗“搭车”搭得很开心
(Laughter)
(笑声)
Now, the seal tags have recorded over 200,000 dives over the season, and upon a closer look, we get to see the individual seal tracks and the repetitive dives. We are on our way to decode what is really happening over that foraging ground, and it's quite beautiful. Once you superimpose the acoustic data collected by the drones, a picture starts to emerge. As the seals leave the islands and swim from left to right, they are observed to dive at a relatively shallow depth of about 20 meters, which the drone identifies is populated by small young pollock with low calorific content. The seals then swim much greater distance and start to dive deeper to a place where the drone identifies larger, more adult pollock, which are more nutritious as fish. Unfortunately, the calories expended by the mother seals to swim this extra distance don't leave them with enough energy to lactate their pups back on the island, leading to the population decline. Further, the drones identify that the water temperature around the island has significantly warmed. It might be one of the driving forces that's pushing the pollock north, and to spread in search of colder regions. So the data analysis is ongoing, but already we can see that some of the pieces of the puzzle from the fur seal mystery are coming into focus.
截至目前,海豹标签已经记录了 当季20多万次游动, 细看一下, 我们能看到每只海狗的 运动轨迹和重复性游动。 我们正在解码 试图了解那片觅食圣地的真实动态, 真的很美。 如果你把无人机采集到的 声音数据叠加在一起, 就会出现一张图片。 随着海狗离开这些 岛屿,从左往右游, 据观察,它们在较浅的地方 下潜了20米左右, 而无人机探测到 此处有很多低热量小狭鳕。 随后,这些海狗游到了更远的地方 开始潜到更深的地方 根据无人机探测, 此处有更大、更成熟的狭鳕, 这些狭鳕的营养更加丰富。 不幸的是,海狗妈妈多游一段距离 到此处消耗的热量 使其不能留有足够的能量 哺乳岛上的幼崽, 导致海狗数量下滑。 此外,无人机发现 岛屿附近的水温 已经大幅上升。 这可能是导致狭鳕往北游的原因之一, 以便寻找更加寒冷的栖息地。 数据分析还在持续进行, 但是,我们已经意识到 一些关于海狗谜团的碎片 正逐渐明朗。
But if you look back at the big picture, we are mammals, too. And actually, the oceans provide up to 20 kilos of fish per human per year. As we deplete our fish stocks, what can we humans learn from the fur seal story? And beyond fish, the oceans affect all of us daily as they drive global weather systems, which affect things like global agricultural output or can lead to devastating destruction of lives and property through hurricanes, extreme heat and floods. Our oceans are pretty much unexplored and undersampled, and today, we still know more about other planets than our own.
但是,大家回过头来看一看, 我们也是哺乳动物。 实际上,大海每年给每个人 提供的鱼肉多达20公斤。 在我们不断地消耗鱼的存量时, 我们人类能从海狗的 故事中学到些什么呢? 除了鱼以外,海洋与我们的 日常生活也息息相关。 因为海洋影响全球天气系统, 天气影响全球农业产量, 而飓风、酷热、洪灾会造成巨大破坏, 导致巨大的生命财产损失。 大部分海洋区域未经勘探、欠采样, 如今,我们对其他星球的认识 超过我们对地球的认识。
But if you divide this vast ocean in six-by-six-degree squares, each about 400 miles long, you'd get about 1,000 such squares. So little by little, working with our partners, we are deploying one ocean drone in each of those boxes, the hope being that achieving planetary coverage will give us better insights into those planetary systems that affect humanity.
但是,如果把这浩瀚的海洋 划分成6*6的区域, 每片区域大约长644千米, 就能得到1000片区域。 一点一滴,循序渐进, 与我们的合作伙伴一起努力, 我们会在每一格 里面部署一个无人机, 希望能覆盖全球海洋 以此让我们更好地了解 这些影响人类的行星系统。
We have been using robots to study distant worlds in our solar system for a while now. Now it is time to quantify our own planet, because we cannot fix what we cannot measure, and we cannot prepare for what we don't know.
我们用机器人来研究 太阳系中的遥远世界 也有些时日了。 现在是时候来量化地球了, 因为不能测量东西就不能处理, 对于我们不懂的事物 我们也不能未雨绸缪。
Thank you.
谢谢大家。
(Applause)
(掌声)