UK-based ocean drone company Oshen has made maritime history, with its autonomous ‘C-Stars’ robots becoming the first to successfully collect live data from inside a ‘Category 5 hurricane’ at sea. Founded by Anahita Laverack, the firm’s breakthrough in gathering unprecedented storm data is now attracting major governmental and defense industry clients.
Imagine sending a tiny, autonomous vessel directly into the heart of the ocean’s most violent storms. That’s precisely what a pioneering UK company has achieved, marking a revolutionary leap in how we understand and predict hurricanes. Oshen, a British oceangoing drone manufacturer, has successfully deployed the first ocean robot to not just approach, but to survive and collect data through a monstrous Category 5 hurricane.
This historic feat began with a series of failures. The company was founded by Anahita Laverack, who initially aimed to build small autonomous sailing robots to cross the Atlantic for the Microtransat Challenge. “I realized half the reason that all of these attempts were failing is, number one, obviously it’s hard to make micro-robots survive in the ocean, and number two, they don’t have enough data on the ocean to know what the weather is or even know what the ocean conditions are like,” Laverack explained. This insight became Oshen’s mission: to build small, cheap, and incredibly resilient robots that could finally provide that missing real-world data.
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The result is the ‘C-Stars’ fleet—swarms of autonomous micro-robots designed to survive at sea for 100 days straight. Developing them was no simple task. “It’s not as simple as just taking an existing larger robot and shrinking it down,” Laverack noted. The company spent two years in rigorous testing, iterating designs on shore and immediately taking them to the water to see how they held up. The goal was a mass-deployable, affordable robot that was also technologically robust enough for long-term, independent data collection.
Oshen’s breakthrough moment came when it caught the attention of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). After the company successfully deployed robots into brutal winter storms in the U.K., NOAA reached out. Ahead of the 2025 hurricane season, Oshen’s bots were deployed near the U.S. Virgin Islands in the predicted path of Hurricane Humberto. According to reports, the expectation was modest: gather data leading up to the storm. The reality was astounding.
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The C-Stars robots didn’t just observe from the periphery; they weathered the entire cataclysm. “The bots were also able to weather the entire storm—minus a few missing parts—and collected data the whole time, becoming the first ocean robot to collect data through a ‘Category 5’ hurricane,” Laverack stated. This provided an unprecedented, live data stream from the most dangerous part of the storm, information previously impossible to obtain safely.
The success has catapulted the young company into the spotlight. Oshen has now moved to a dedicated hub for marine tech companies and is securing contracts with significant customers, including the U.K. government, for applications in both weather forecasting and defense operations. To meet the growing demand, the company is planning a venture capital raise to strengthen its supply chain.
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For meteorologists, climate scientists, and coastal communities, this isn’t just a robotics story. It’s a paradigm shift. By placing durable, data-gathering robots directly in the path of hurricanes, Oshen and founder Anahita Laverack have opened a new window into these powerful phenomena. The data they collect could dramatically improve intensity forecasting and early warning systems, turning what was once a destructive mystery into a monitored, measurable event.
