Page 65: of Marine Technology Magazine (March 2014)

CARIS Bathy DataBASE technology, reducing the time taken to generate modern survey deliverables. Ideally, the tools for seabed mapping would be ubiquitous and persistent, with data being collected continuously at a sufÞ ciently high resolution to meet the needs of all end users. The key to realizing this vision is lowering the cost of both platforms and sensors to not only reduce the initial investment required, but also to minimize the Þ -nancial risk in the event of loss. Large diameter vehicles have been ideal de- velopment platforms due to their size (for ease of mechanical integration) as well stability. However, the cost and requirements for launch and recovery can be prohibitive. A recent development at Kraken has been the design of a compact In-SAS array, known as MINSAS (for Miniature Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Sonar), that is optimized for smaller diameter low cost platforms such as small AUVs and towed bodies. While there will always be a need for a range of vehicle sizes, the beneÞ ts of InSAS technology are now available across a wide spectrum of platforms. Future work will continue to push the limits for surveying with smaller and more affordable platforms, thereby bringing real-time 3D imaging to wid-est possible group of end users.Jeremy Dillon holds a PhD in physics and physical oceanography from Me- morial University of Newfoundland, as well as master?s degrees in mathe- matics and aeronautics from Carleton University and Caltech, respectively. Previously, he was an instrumenta- tion engineer with the Flight Research Laboratory of the National Research Council Canada specializing in iner- tial/GPS navigation and distributed re- al-time systems. His present interests include synthetic aperture sonar, un- derwater navigation, and repeat-pass interferometry. www.seadiscovery.com Marine Technology Reporter 65MTR #2 (50-65).indd 65MTR #2 (50-65).indd 652/21/2014 11:42:34 AM2/21/2014 11:42:34 AM