The U.S. Navy has registered trademarks for a sea glider that serves as a teaching aid for science, technology, engineering and math classes.
The service branch said Tuesday that Joseph Teter, director of technology transfer at the Naval Surface Warfare Center’s Carderock division, collaborated with intellectual patent attorney Michael Badagliacca to obtain the trademarks for SeaGlide through the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
“We wanted to make them widely available because SeaGlide is garnering more and more interest from schools and organizations wanting to participate,” Teter said.
“Our primary mission in regards to SeaGlide is reaching as many schools and having plenty of exposure, so that as many kids as possible are at least — even if they don’t go into STEM fields — getting a better understanding of engineering,” said Michael Britt-Crane, lead developer of SeaGlide.
SeaGlide was developed through a cooperative research-and-development agreement between the Carderock division, the Naval Undersea Warfare Center and the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.
Britt-Crane noted that the unmanned vehicle has reached depths of up to 25 feet in Carderock’s basin and could serve as test modules larger drones that operate in the ocean.
