Page 28: of Marine Technology Magazine (March 2012)

survey, pre- and post-construction and monitoring, the environmental monitoring portion and archaeology and salvage. There is also the research side of the market, where universities and institutions around the globe that are doing oceanographic research and subsea platform and sensor development. Those are the three markets that we see and serve. Defense is by far the largest. Work in the Arctic seems to be an area of application because of the extreme environment. Kelly: It is definitely applicable. Our vehicles have partic- ipated in some arctic and under ice experiments, but the routine, day-to-day application has not been demonstrat- ed. We expected to see our vehicles operating in very high latitudes in the upcoming year. What are some of the other areas of growth? Kelly: I think AUV technology is moving out of the earli- er proof-of-concept phase and into a generalized accept- ance phase. We are starting to see the Navy actually doing operational procurements and are seeing greater interest from various foreign militaries that are starting their experimentation or are starting to look at procuring capa- bilities themselves. Mine countermeasures is the foremost application for the Navies where they are either retro- fitting or replacing their mine countermeasure ships with AUV capabilities. In the commercial market, the technol- ogy has been proven now and there has been a couple of leading firms that have dominated the use of AUVs in that space. We are starting to see a broader look from the sec- ond tier adopters. The company seems to be expanding.Kelly: We moved to the new facility, first because we wanted to co-locate all our activities especially the engi-neering and marine operations groups in one space. Secondly, to have the capability and flexibility to support the growing market, especially as it matures to higher lev- els of production and use. Our focus has been to better support those markets we serve. We are seeing operational capabilities coming out of the Navy and the defense mar- ket, and greater use and greater growth out of the com- mercial market. We also acquired the assets of an ROV manufacturer. Hawkes Remotes. They are working on a prototype vehicle targeted to the commercial markets with a little different architecture and more of an IRM class ROV. It would enable us to be able to play across the spectrum of autonomy from a fully Subsea Vehicle Technology Subsea Vehicle Technology 28MTRMarch 2012 MTR#2 (18-33):MTR Layouts 2/22/2012 12:00 PM Page 28