Page 54: of Marine Technology Magazine (November 2021)

Tech File

Innovative new products, technologies and concepts

Sonardyne, Wavefront Demo Obstacle Avoidance

Underwater obstacle avoidance tech from Sonardyne and

Wavefront, was demonstrated on board an extra-large, uncrewed, underwater vehicle (XLUUV) built and operated by Plymouth- based MSubs Ltd. The demonstration of the Vigilant forward looking sonar was part of the ? rst phase of the UK’s Defense and Security Accelerator’s (DASA) ‘Uncrewed Underwater Ve- hicle Testbed – Opportunity to Integrate’ competition, run jointly with the Royal Navy and the Defense Science and Technology

Laboratory (Dstl). Vigilant, developed by Wavefront and manu- factured and commercialized by Sonardyne, is a navigation and obstacle avoidance sonar for ships, uncrewed surface vessels (USVs) and underwater vehicles.

The system has two operating modes. In 3D mode, Vigilant produces accurate 3D bathymetry and color-coded depth imag- ery out to 600 m and to depths down to 100 m. In Sonar mode,

Vigilant processes the intensity of the acoustic data to extract Vigilant is easy to retro? t on a wide range of platforms including long-range positional data out to 1.5 km and over a 120-degree ships, USVs or, as in this case, an XLUUV. As part of the dem- ? eld of view. The sonar returns are used to generate alerts high- onstration, the XLUUV was programmed to travel beyond the lighting the presence of a navigationally relevant obstacle. breakwater outside Plymouth sound. Vigilant was used to create

For the trial, the system’s sonar projector and receiver ar- a bathymetric map that was used by the XLUUV to navigate. ray were mounted in the bow of the 9 m-long MSubs’ S201 The data was also overlaid over existing charts of the area, dem-

XLUUV. At just 31 cm-wide and weighing only 14 kg in air, onstrating the higher resolution provided by Vigilant.

Kongsberg Launches Blue Insight

Kongsberg Maritime (KM) launched Blue Insight, a cloud- based digital toolbox to enable state-of-the-art collection, visual- ization, contextualization, management and distribution of ocean data, focusing on marine and meteorological information.

Blue Insight is designed to provide an open, modular platform for the processing, visualization and sharing of ocean data. The core module contains the cloud framework – which has been built to the highest cyber security standards – and an application- speci? c dashboard, teamed with data storage and management functionalities. Additional modules can be added to this frame- work to tailor Blue Insight’s functionality to suit all projects,

Image courtesy Kongsberg Image courtesy Sonardyne however large or small. Key to Blue Insight’s data-streaming functionality is the concept of sensor fusion, by which data is automated data forwarding to external cloud systems or data- streamlined from various onboard sensors and a local database bases. Science Analytics supplies an infrastructure for more in- for seamless transmission into the cloud. In addition, the module depth data-handling capabilities, such as the implementation of machine learning and AI-enhanced data analysis on board or in serves as a link with KM onboard sensors for remote operation.

Data can be collected from any platform. Through ongoing the cloud. As an example, one of the ? rst delivery projects has seen the module providing a framework on unmanned surface delivery projects, several modules already exist to assist custom- vehicles for the automated onboard classi? cation of ? sh. The ers in obtaining the best results from Blue Insight, including Re- portfolio of modules and support for speci? c instruments will mote, a module that enables remote access to a KM echosounder via a web interface; Ocean View, a web-based visualization tool be continuously expanded, consistent with KM’s aim to provide customers with unprecedently swift access to data, even in heter- for historic and real-time sensor or database data; and Data For- warder, enabling data conversion into any common format and ogenous environments.

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