By Futurist Thomas Frey
On October 10, 2025, something quietly extraordinary slipped beneath the waves. A robotic underwater glider named Redwing, developed by Teledyne Marine and Rutgers University, began what is likely humanity’s first fully autonomous circumnavigation of the globe. Its mission: traverse some 73,000 kilometers over five or more years, surfacing only to transmit data before diving deep again. This isn’t just a proof-of-concept—it’s a marker: the oceans are entering an age of autonomous sovereignty. (Photo credit: Teledyne Marine)
Redwing isn’t a conventional submarine. It glides by modulating buoyancy—rising and falling in gentle arcs—turning vertical motion into forward advance. It carries modest thrusters for push-through when currents fight it. Its sensors map temperature, salinity, depth, and acoustic signals. Every eight to twelve hours, it breaks the surface, links up with satellites, and uploads its findings. Then it dives again into the dark.
What makes this mission consequential is not simply that it navigates nearly the entire global ocean—but that it does so without human intervention. The ocean, long the last frontier of human exploration, is now being charted, instrumented, and surveilled by machines that never rest. Redwing doesn’t get seasick. It doesn’t suffer heat exhaustion. It never tires, never loses focus, never fears. And as it goes, it collapses the gap between our ambition and execution in oceanography.
Consider the ripple effects:
First, ocean science will no longer rely on episodic ship voyages or human crews. Data will flow continuously from every depth, in every latitudinal corridor, from remote abyssal trenches to equatorial currents. The ocean’s rhythms—its seasonal cycles, microbial dynamics, chemical fluxes—will cease being sampled snapshots and become living documentaries.
Second, environmental and biological monitoring will go multiplanar. Redwing and its siblings will listen to whale songs, detect migrating schools of fish, monitor heat anomalies, catch pollution plumes, and even follow underwater cables—all in real time.
Third, we begin to think of the sea not as a void to explore but as a platform to govern. Nations, corporations, and research institutions will vie to deploy robot fleets—mapping, surveilling, policing. A new form of maritime power emerges: the ability to seed, maintain, and manage undersea robotic networks.
Fourth, economy and industry shift. Offshore energy, aquaculture, seabed mining—each becomes accessible via persistent robotic oversight. Autonomous gliders could inspect undersea infrastructure without diver risk. Insurance models for shipping, fishing, and deep-sea projects will depend on robot-fed risk models. Coastal nations will assert sovereignty not merely over waters, but over the robotic grid beneath them.
But the trajectory is not without tensions. Who owns the data Redwing gathers? If a glider detects illegal dumping, which jurisdiction acts? What if Redwing’s acoustic record picks up military activity? A machine mapping seabed features may run into territorial claims or resource disputes. And when robots outperform human crews, what becomes of marine research vessels, crews, and oceanographic institutions?
By 2040, we may see fleets of Redwings. Swarm gliders coordinating to triangulate undersea features. AI-piloted robotic constellations that adapt, reassign sensors, and self-repair. The sea floor becomes a data plane—alive, instrumented, listening. Humanity’s relationship with the ocean shifts: from fisherman and explorer to network operator and curator of the marine realm.
This transition comes at a cultural inflection. For millennia, oceans symbolized mystery, depth, and danger. We told stories of Leviathan and lost fleets. Yet now, oceans may become less mysterious than data hubs. Curiosity will shift from what lies beneath to how networks behave. The wonder will no longer be the abyss, but how we design its guardians.
Final Thoughts
Redwing’s plunge marks not the end of exploration but the beginning of a new paradigm: the ocean as an autonomous realm, patrolled, cataloged, and understood by machines. When submarines begin to circumnavigate without humans, the boundary between human and sea dissolves. The ocean no longer belongs to ships—it belongs to sensors, algorithms, and persistent robotic presence.
Related reading:
- Edge Computing Is Creating a New Industrial Nervous System
- Digital Twins Are Creating Parallel Industrial Universes
