Pawleys Island, South Carolina, Mayor Brian Henry tells "Your World" that Hurricane Ian was different and brought a significant storm surge to the island. A high-tech sailing drone was deployed onto the Atlantic Ocean near Charleston, South Carolina, this past weekend to collect weather data directly from wicked hurricanes. The autonomous ocean drone, known as a saildrone, was redeployed by California-based company Saildrone Inc., which designs and operates autonomous ocean drones, in partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to assist the agency in data collection on hurricanes. The same saildrone made international headlines in 2021 when it captured the "first-ever video from inside a major hurricane at sea" when Hurricane Sam barreled across the Atlantic. NOAA has previously incorporated drones into its research of hurricanes and 2023 will see an even larger and more high-tech fleet.

Iran's recent seizure of unmanned US Navy boats shined a light on a pioneering Pentagon program to develop networks of air, surface, and underwater drones for patrolling large regions, meshing their surveillance with artificial intelligence. The year-old program operates numerous unmanned surface vessels, or USVs, in the waters around the Arabian peninsula, gathering data and images to be beamed back to collection centers in the Gulf. The program operated without incident until Iranian forces tried to grab three seven-meter Saildrone Explorer USVs in two incidents, on August 29-30 and September 1. In the first, a ship of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps hooked a line to a Saildrone in the Gulf and began towing it away, only releasing it when a US Navy Patrol boat and helicopter sped to the scene. In the second, an Iranian destroyer picked up two Saildrones in the Red Sea, hoisting them aboard.

Iran's recent seizure of unmanned US Navy boats shined a light on a pioneering Pentagon program to develop networks of air, surface and underwater drones for patrolling large regions, meshing their surveillance with artificial intelligence. The year-old program operates numerous unmanned surface vessels, or USVs, in the waters around the Arabian peninsula, gathering data and images to be beamed back to collection centers in the Gulf. The program operated without incident until Iranian forces tried to grab three seven-meter Saildrone Explorer USVs in two incidents, on August 29-30 and September 1. In the first, a ship of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps hooked a line to a Saildrone in the Gulf and began towing it away, only releasing it when a US Navy Patrol boat and helicopter sped to the scene. In the second, an Iranian destroyer picked up two Saildrones in the Red Sea, hoisting them aboard.

Iran's recent seizure of unmanned US Navy boats shined a light on a pioneering Pentagon program to develop networks of air, surface and underwater drones for patrolling large regions, meshing their surveillance with artificial intelligence. The year-old program operates numerous unmanned surface vessels, or USVs, in the waters around the Arabian peninsula, gathering data and images to be beamed back to collection centers in the Gulf. The program operated without incident until Iranian forces tried to grab three seven-meter Saildrone Explorer USVs in two incidents, on August 29-30 and September 1. In the first, a ship of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps hooked a line to a Saildrone in the Gulf and began towing it away, only releasing it when a US Navy Patrol boat and helicopter sped to the scene. In the second, an Iranian destroyer picked up two Saildrones in the Red Sea, hoisting them aboard.

The ocean economy is growing in importance, and with it grows the need to map, understand, and track the ocean itself. Saildrone has been doing just that with its fleet of autonomous science vessels, and the company has now raised a massive $100M round C to pursue its ro-boat aspirations further. Saildrone's boats have been in continuous use for years now, making all kinds of interesting voyages that would be too dangerous or too tedious for a human crew to attempt. For instance earlier this month one of the vessels sailed straight into a hurricane for a NOAA project to better understand these increasingly frequent and violent storms. Good luck getting someone to brave 50-foot waves and 120 MPH winds to collect some data when there's a robotic option.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has shared what it says are the first images and video captured inside a hurricane by a surface drone. The agency placed the Saildrone Explorer SD 1045 in the path of the category-four Hurricane Sam. The saildrone overcame 50-foot waves and winds at speeds topping 120 miles per hour to capture data from the hurricane and offer a new perspective into such storms. The device has a special "hurricane wing" to help it survive the intense wind conditions. The SD 1045 is one of five saildrones that have been in the Atlantic Ocean during hurricane season.

Drones aren't just flying through the air -- they're also sailing the Pacific Ocean as the newest scientific weapon to combat climate change. The hope is that by mapping the ocean floor, collecting weather and ocean data, and counting fish and wildlife populations, the autonomous Saildrones will measure the changes happening right now on our planet. Climate change is reshaping planet Earth, causing sea levels to rise, melting Arctic ice and raising global temperatures. According to NASA, the global average sea level has risen seven inches over the past 100 years. Arctic summer sea ice has shrunk to its lowest levels on record, and the average global temperature has gone up 2.1 degrees Fahrenheit since 2000, posing a threat to life as we know it.

They are also using machine learning to help the Surveyor sense and respond to its surroundings when it's out at sea. "We have to make sure the sonar …

As organizations gain more experience deploying machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) across different parts of the business, they're discovering new and interesting ways to use the technology. Typical use cases include established applications such as personalization, fraud detection, and speech recognition. But there's much more to explore. "The cloud enables extremely low-cost compute and storage, which opens up opportunities for more modeling," says Sri Elaprolu, senior leader, Amazon Machine Learning Solutions Lab. "There's lots of innovation yet to happen. We are barely scratching the surface."

Over the weekend a Saildrone -- a 23-foot long uncrewed marine robot -- withstood the tempestuous seas around Antarctica to complete the first-ever circumnavigation of the continent by a drone. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists collaborated with autonomous vehicle specialists, Saildrone, to test whether the seafaring robot could survive the rough waters, and make successful scientific observations. NOAA needs to gauge how much carbon dioxide -- the potent greenhouse gas now amassing in the atmosphere -- the southern seas are absorbing from the air, and it hopes Saildrones can help. Overall, the oceans soak up a huge amount of the CO2 that humanity emits into the atmosphere (some 30 percent), which has substantially curbed Earth's accelerating temperature rise. Now, understanding how much carbon the oceans will likely soak up in the future is critical to grasping how Earth's increasingly disrupted climate will transform society and the natural world.