Page 24: of Marine Technology Magazine (September 2021)

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Hydromea is 70 cm-long and weighs about. It uses an LF RF system

Swiss ? rm Hydromea has developed Vertex, a small AUV for communications and an acoustic system for localisation for swarm operations to gather 3D environmental water col- within the swarm, similar to an LBL concept and all devel- umn data at 10 to 100 times less than traditional methods. oped by Hydromea. “One Vertex is either constantly track- “The only way to get temporally consistent snapshots ing the swarm from the surface or coming up to pick up the across a water volume is to deploy as many sensors in paral- GPS signal and to recalibrate the entire swarm down,” says lel as possible,” says the company. “Our drones are designed Hydromea. But it’s likely that the technology developed for to carry these sensors to where they need to be and ef? cient- swarm operations with Vertex will ? rst see commercial use ly scan a body of water simultaneously collecting thousands in another of Hydromea’s development; ExRay, a small in- of data points.” spection ROV that’s initially being developed for ? ooded,

The vehicle, which is currently in development (its ? rst con? ned space inspections before being deployed in open dive was seven years ago and it’s been tested under ice), water, initially down to 400 m.

Bedrock Ocean Exploration www.bedrockocean.com rooklyn, New York-based Bedrock Ocean Ex- vide a free public map of our oceans” and as part of this ploration (which is billed as a public bene? t cor- they’ve started ingesting NOAA National Centers for En- poration) in August announced it had launched vironmental Information Data Center for Digital Bathym-

B a “full service” ocean survey offering, using etry’s survey database.

“? eets” of its own man-portable AUV platform and Mo- Little information is available about the ? rm’s self-de- saic, a survey cloud-based (subscription-based) data plat- signed AUV, but visuals show a DVL and DiMare has said form – to solve data gathering and processing/use prob- it can carry MBES, side scan sonar, magnetometer and lems. sub-bottom pro? ler and makes operations easier because

The ? rm, founded in 2019 by CEO Anthony DiMare they can be shipped or ? own more easily, and don’t need and former SpaceX and submarine engineer CTO Charles to be in containers or deployed by ships, like traditional

Chiau. Before co-founding Bedrock, DiMare co-founded survey AUVs. An August CNBC article shared by Bed-

Nautilus Labs, a technology company focused on maritime rock says that the vehicles run for 12- or 24-hour missions, transportation. Before that he was a mechanical engineer at typically at a speed of 2 to 3 knots (or less than 5 mph) to various tech start-up companies. conduct surveys up to 300 meters in depth. It also says the

Bedrock, which says it’s offering technology that can ? rm currently has just one vehicle, but plans to build and speed up the time it takes to get seabed data by a factor of send ? eets of them into the water and plans to double its 10, raised $8 million in a seed round from Eniac Ventures, staf? ng from 25 now to 50 in the next year. In June the ? rm

Primary Venture Partners, Quiet Capital and R7 in March took on Jim Snyder, formerly Field Engineering Manager

Bedrock’s goal is a commercial service, but also to pro- at OceanServer, an L3Harris business. 24 September/October 2021

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