When Fritz Stahr was growing up in the 1960s, deep-sea explorers were kings: think Jacques Cousteau and SEALABs, underwater “rooms” where aquanauts lived. “Everyone wants to go down [and] see the bottom of the sea with his own eyes,” says Stahr, who today markets one of the hottest new gadgets in underwater exploration.
Stahr runs the Seaglider Fabrication Center (SFC) at the University of Washington in Seattle. After scientists at the university's School of Oceanography and Applied Physics Lab co-created the Seaglider to collect ocean data, they needed businesspeople to build and sell the robots. Stahr had a degree in mechanical engineering and a decade of experience designing medical instruments and lasers for Bay Area companies. He was business and science wrapped in one.
After helping redesign the Seaglider for manufacturability and increasing production from one at a time to about five, in May 2008 Stahr helped the University of Washington secure a sole licensing agreement for the Seaglider with the iRobot Corporation, known for its Roomba vacuum. The company sees oceanography as the next frontier for robotics, according to CEO Helen Greiner.
The Seaglider looks like a missile—one that comes in hot pink, orange and neon yellow shells. The small 'bots journey through the sea—to distances and under conditions too harsh for most ships—gathering data about water temperature, salinity, pressure and, sometimes, dissolved oxygen, chlorophyll fluorescence and optical backscatter levels. Oceanographers use the information to determine how the ocean circulates and what can live there. The Navy needs to know temperature stratification to know sound velocity, which is what they use to “see” through the water.SFC has produced 60 Seagliders to date, mostly for oceanography departments. If navies and researchers decide it's easier and cheaper to use the glider than to use ships (and Stahr says it is), thousands more robots could be sold. Efficient and productive, it seems the only downside to Seagliders is the fact that they sometimes go missing. “The ocean is often an unforgiving environment,” Stahr says, “but it covers 70 percent of the planet, so there's lots of it we need data about and Seagliders are more expendable than ships [or] people.”
iRobot eventually will take over manufacturing and marketing of the Seaglider completely, making the Seaglider Fabrication Center obsolete and putting Stahr out of a job. He's not sure what's next for him professionally, but the former Stanford crew team member is sure he'll keep close to the water. He and his wife, Erin Moore, '83, plan to sail around the world.
IRENE NOGUCHI is Class of ’02.
