Page 20: of Marine Technology Magazine (September 2021)

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Big is good. <1m is better.

Over the last couple of decades, AUVs have become fully established work horses of ocean mapping and surveillance, but there’s still room for innovation.

Elaine Maslin looks at activity in the sub-1m collaborative drone market. ew breeds of AUV are on their way. Some are ecoSUB Robotics bigger, but there’s also a host of companies But others are now seeing success. In November last year, developing small (<1m), lower-cost AUVs to UK-based ecoSUB Robotics started selling its micro AUVs use in swarms, allowing either faster aerial to customers and there are now 50-60 out in the wild with

N coverage of the seabed or faster more three- various payloads, says Terry Sloane, managing director at dimensional sampling of bodies of water in shorter periods parent company Planet Ocean. Customers spread from Af- of time. rica to Japan include Plymouth Marine Laboratory and Dal-

It’s been a pipe dream for some time, and some have fallen housie University. by the wayside trying to make it happen. Despite having won The company was set up in 2015 and has had Innovate

U.S. Navy contracts to support its SwarmDiver development, UK and Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (UK

Australian ? rm Aquabotix, quietly went into liquidation in MOD) funding and has collaborated with the Marine Au-

December 2020 having struggled to get funding to continue tonomous Robotics Systems Group at the UK’s National its work (it had gone down a stock market listing route, leav- Oceanography Centre.

ing it open to more impatient investors). Its now commercial ecoSUBµ5 Micro-AUV is 92cm long,

Photo courtesy ecoSUB ecoSUB Robotics 20 September/October 2021

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