Engineer’s solar seadrone makes historic crossing

BIZ CPT-SEADRONE-QA 2 SJ

October 26, 2016

By Ethan Baron

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — For some, a midlife crisis can be solved atop a spanking-new, cherry-red Ducati motorcycle. For a few, it’s trading in a well-worn spouse for a younger model. For others, especially in Silicon Valley, founding a startup does the trick.

For Damon McMillan, the appropriate response was a project in his Sunnyvale garage, to do something never accomplished before — no road rocket, broken family or venture capitalists required. And now, after two years of toil, and the addition of three people to the project, the result of McMillan’s labors is somewhere out in the middle of the Pacific, maybe lost forever, maybe not — but that no longer matters much to McMillan.

Seacharger, his autonomous, solar-powered boat, did what it was supposed to do, against McMillan’s own expectations: making the first-ever trip by a sun-powered robot watercraft from the U.S. mainland to Hawaii. The craft came ashore on the Big Island in July, just short of six weeks after leaving Half Moon Bay, a city 20 miles south of San Francisco.

When McMillan was deciding on a project, he stuck to his general areas of expertise. With a history of working on sophisticated unmanned aerial vehicles, he considered a record-setting drone flight but was deterred by the lack of a flight-testing site.

However, McMillan works for Liquid Robotics, a company that makes wave- and solar-powered watercraft for military and industrial use. And, he said, “A boat is a good compromise between being not too hard and not too easy.”

A competition involving robotic sailboats crossing the Atlantic caught his attention. “I thought, ‘Hey, I could do that,’” McMillan said. He recruited his friend J.T. Zemp, a software developer, to help him build an autonomous sailboat. But then a company called Saildrone launched a wind-powered autonomous vessel, aiming for Hawaii, and McMillan and Zemp got to talking. “Why don’t we go solar?” they asked. And they did. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Did you watch Seacharger reach harbor in Hawaii?

A: I was on the dock. It came into the harbor, and my wife jumped in and guided it to the ladder where my brother and I hefted it out of the water. It wasn’t quite as triumphant as I thought it would be — it was more just weird, surreal, bizarre, because 41 days prior to that I had launched it from the beach and watched it go away. It was just very bizarre to watch that little boat that I had last seen 41 days before in California in a cold, relatively gray atmosphere arrive in a beautiful Hawaii sunset in all that warm water.

Q: Is there a higher purpose behind this project, beyond doing something that hadn’t been done before?

A: No. Plain and simple. You could call it a midlife crisis. I’ve been an engineer working on other people’s projects in my career, which is fine, but there comes a time when you want to strike out on your own and do something completely independently and still find success in it.

Q: What kinds of applications are there for technology such as Seacharger’s?

A: When it comes to commercial applications, the sky’s the limit. There’s a lot of oil and gas work done in the ocean, exploring for oil and gas. There’s environmental monitoring. There are military applications, you know, detecting submarines. There’s detecting people who are fishing where they shouldn’t be. One of the things that I learned is that there’s a lot more going on in the ocean than most people know about.

Q: Did the vessel have any problems with ocean conditions, weather or sea creatures during the crossing to Hawaii?

A: It probably had 100 barnacles on it … about three or four that were of significant size. After more time it would’ve gotten more barnacles. I looked for shark teeth marks, but there weren’t any, unfortunately — it would’ve been cool. It did definitely see some higher wind conditions. The waves slow it down, there’s no question about that. It’s probably seen at least 40 mph winds. It would probably do well in most tropical storms — it wouldn’t necessarily track in a straight line, but it would probably survive. You put it in a hurricane, that’s a different story.

Q: How much did the Seacharger project cost?

A: I don’t know. I started keeping receipts and then never dared to add them up. I would guess it’s more than $5,000 and less than $8,000. If I had to do it again it would be a lot cheaper, because that figure includes a lot of expenses for making mistakes.

Q: What comes next for Seacharger?

A: It’s going south, sort of toward New Zealand. The last waypoint it’s programmed with is sort of off the coast of New Zealand. If it makes it that far I will decide exactly where to land it. I was surprised that it made it to Hawaii, as were many people. To Hawaii was 2,400 miles; from Hawaii to New Zealand is 4,400. Things happen. I probably worry about it more than I should.

Q: Are you done with boats?

A: I’ve accomplished what I set out to accomplish, and I have a great job, so I’m happy to leave it at that. Seacharger has been awesome. Ever since May, when I took it to Maker Faire and people started seeing it and commenting on it, it’s been a huge uplift. It’s also fun to put yourself out there and try something in a somewhat public way, because it’s exciting to tell people you’re going to send this thing across the ocean before you’ve done it. It’s my version of skydiving or rock climbing. It’s a thrill.

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Damon McMillan

Age: 39

Born: Ukiah, Calif.

Home: Sunnyvale, Calif.

Education: Master’s in aerospace dynamics, Cranfield University; bachelor’s in aeronautics and astronautics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Career: Senior mechanical engineer at Liquid Robotics of Sunnyvale; former aeronautical engineer at Aerovel and Insitu in Washington state

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Five things about Damon McMillan

1. My kids would say I can fix anything, even with the wrong tool.

2. I’m very active in church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons).

3. I’ve done 50-kilometer trail runs, running and walking.