ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Matching Autonomy to the Mission with Mike Flanagan, CEO of Seasats
Autonomous Maritime Systems, Mission Autonomy & AI
How do you know when an autonomous system is ready for a real mission? Mike Flanigan, co-founder and CEO of Seasats, has built robotic boats that can run fully on their own, but he says customers rarely use them that way. What they want is a boat that carries out the mission, sends updates, and checks in at key decision points, the way a good team would.
In this episode of Cleared for Takeoff, host Ben Tosado speaks with Mike about autonomous maritime systems, mission autonomy, and the role of AI in uncrewed surface vessels (USVs) across defense, government, and commercial operations.
Mike's interest in ocean robotics goes back to 2012, when he joined a group of friends in Rhode Island building an autonomous boat to carry a message in a bottle across the Atlantic. That project launched their careers, and after years in different roles across the industry, several of them came back together to found Seasats. Today, the company deploys long-endurance autonomous surface vessels for commercial and defense customers, taking on work traditionally performed by crewed vessels.
In this episode:
- How to tell whether an autonomy demo is ready for a real mission, using Mike's one-question test
- Why customers choose boats that check in, even when they could run silent
- How a mission's envelope decides what the boat handles alone and when it reports back
- How AI at the edge cuts camera and sensor data down to the small share that matters
- Where robotic boats are already replacing crewed work, from maritime surveillance to fisheries monitoring and seafloor surveys
- How size, speed, payload, and endurance determine which vessel fits which mission
- How agentic AI is changing the way hardware companies build
- What military customers and investors look for before they trust a robot with a mission
- Why Mike thinks swarms are overhyped
For leaders across the Defense Industrial Base, aerospace, government, and commercial technology, this is a practical look at what it takes to move autonomous systems from demonstration into real-world operations.
About Mike Flanigan
Mike Flanigan is the co-founder and CEO of Seasats, a company developing long-endurance autonomous surface vessels for defense, government, and commercial applications.
Seasats: https://seasats.com
Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
1:15 From a message in a bottle to a robotics company
2:08 The second generation of ocean robots
4:26 What the boat decides and what it reports back
5:33 Why no-comms missions are rare
7:01 Processing data on board
7:49 A small robotic boat spots a billion-dollar warship
8:48 The jobs robots can take on at sea
12:37 Why Seasats builds the whole system
14:20 How agentic AI is changing development
17:44 Matching the vessel to the mission
19:59 What military customers need to see
21:06 What investors heard from customers
23:01 Rapid round
About Cleared for Takeoff
Cleared for Takeoff explores the people, technologies, and ideas moving innovation forward across defense, aerospace, and the broader national security ecosystem. Hosted by Ben Tosado, CEO of Deep Blue Cloud.
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Deep Blue Cloud: https://www.deepbluecloud.io/
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