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Bob Anderson, current President, and Jon Crowell, Director of Engineering, co-founded the privately held Fall River, Mass.-based Ocean Server eight years ago. Anderson brought operations, sales and marketing to the table, and Cromwell his engineering expertise. Together the two ? who had previously been in business together in the high-end commercial computer business ? have sought to revolutionize the small AUV segment with a focus on small, well-engineered systems that are cost effec- tive to acquire and reliable to operation. ?We took a com- puter system design, the way it is designed, the way it isdocumented, and the way the cabling and reliability is designed, so it is really a computer system in a tube,? Crowell said. Because you are not held to certain parameters you would be more likely to think outside of the box? Crowell: Yes, we are thinking outside the box because we don?t have that history. Anderson:The other issue was the consumer off the shelf(COTS) technology that was available to us. In the com- mercial world you take for granted there are certain appli- cations that drive high volume movement like discs, drives, communications, all standards driven stuff. Then you flip over into the marine side and they really had not been adopting these technologies that were perceived as being less robust, when in reality just because of the sheer volume of them they were far more functional and dependable and less expensive than what was available in these niche environments. So what are the market segments your company is aim- ing for and what are the strengths of your technology? Crowell: We can build an AUV that operates differently and needs no infrastructure. One person can take it to the field and throw it in. Our price point originally was under fifty thousand dollars for an AUV. We got a lot of ?yeah everybody says that,? but we deliver it. Today on our web- site it is forty nine thousand dollars, U.S. price. So we stuck to that, and our goal is to make it less expensive. Anderson: The two keys to making that happen are to organically develop the expensive components. When you buy something there are all these overhead costs associat- ed with it especially if you buy it from a high cost suppli- er, but if you build it yourself and provide your own IP, then you can capture the margin and lower the cost and it?s under your control. The second thing is a lot of our engineering efforts have been focused on taking all these components that are independently functional, but doing all the systems engineering to make them work, to prove them out, and to assure the firmware works and all the systems aspects are understood. Crowell: In the beginning, for example, a compass we looked at was $800, and the board it had $30 worth of parts. So we started designing and producing our own, and we now have several thousand customers for com- passes.So you have been able to provide this technology to work within tighter budgets?Anderson: The simple operations and cost are enablingcompanies that would have never before considered buy- ing an AUV. The big guys used to look at it as a toy because it didn?t carry this particular sensor or that one. They thought we wanted to compete in a particular mar- ket, but in reality we wanted to create a different market. Now people are taking our vehicles and using them where they used to use a towed array, for example. Crowell: Take hydrographic surveys for example. Let?s say they have to do a sounding in Boston Harbor. NOAA sends the white ship, and this multi-million dollar ship comes, and it?s costly. We, on the other hand, can send an AUV in a van and sound Boston Harbor in a few days and get perfect modern, accurate, and timely data. 24MTRMarch 2012 Subsea Vehicle Technology Subsea Vehicle Technology From the Drawing Board Bob Anderson & Jon Crowell President & Director of Engineering,Ocean ServerMTR#2 (18-33):MTR Layouts 2/21/2012 10:48 AM Page 24