marine-robotics
(3)
Granger Whitelaw Is Trading Rocket Fuel for the Ocean Floor
After Indy wins, rocket-plane patents and a long tour through technology companies, Granger Whitelaw has taken on a quieter race: turning Impossible Metals' hovering robots into a working ocean-resource system.
Joe Wolfel
Joe Wolfel is the co-founder and CEO of Terradepth, a Cedar Park, Texas company building an ocean data ecosystem that pairs autonomous underwater robots with a cloud platform to turn fragmented subsea readings into decision-ready intelligence for commercial and government customers. A U.S. Naval Academy graduate and former Navy SEAL, Wolfel started the company in 2018 with fellow SEAL Judson Kauffman after concluding that humanity's ignorance of the ocean was a solvable data problem. He frames Terradepth less as a robotics maker and more as an 'Ocean Operating System,' shifting the maritime industry from buying platforms to buying the intelligence those platforms generate.
Michael G. Johnson
Michael G. Johnson is the founder, president and CTO of Sea Machines Robotics, a Boston company building autonomous control and perception systems for commercial ships and workboats. A Texas A&M marine engineer who spent two decades in offshore oil, heavy-lift ocean transport and salvage at Crowley and TITAN Salvage, Johnson started Sea Machines in 2015 after seeing how avoidable human error was on an Arctic oil-spill response job. In November 2024 he handed the CEO seat to David 'Chip' Wasson and moved into a technology and product role focused on defense and international expansion.