By Andy Choi
James Gosling, a software developer, best known as the father of the Java programming language, has been hired by Liquid Robotics. The company manufactures robot vehicles that explore the bottom of the ocean. James Gosling will join Liquid Robotics as its chief software architect.
Mr Gosling was initially with Sun Microsystems where he developed the Java programining language when it was released in 1994. He was with Sun Microsystems for 26 years from 1984 to 2010. He left when Sun was acquired by Oracle. Since then he has been with Google and now he shifts to Liquid Robotics.
Bill Vass, the Chief Executive Officer of Liquid Robotics used to be a president of a federal subsidiary of Sun Microsystems. Vass was instrumental in bringing James Gosling to Liquid Robotics. The company manufactures the Wave Glider Unmanned Maritime Vehicle (UMV). The UMV uses waves to propel itself by harvesting natural energy and can be used for commercial, scientific and defense purposes.
Gosling said in an interview said the notion of having a fleet of autonomous ocean-going vehicles wandering the world collecting data is something out of fiction. These robot fleets need a lot of enterprise software, including in-situ data reduction.
That is what Gosling will provide. He’s excited about what lies ahead as he said stuff that they’re actually putting in the water today makes it pretty real. I’m at the point in my career where fun is a lot more important to me he said.
Mr. Vass says that there’s almost no limit to the type of information the gliders could collect, and that ultimately there could be thousands of them in the ocean at a time, giving the company unprecedented insight into what’s happening at sea.