Page 47: of Marine Technology Magazine (November 2018)

Sonardyne Leads Ocean Autonomous Project

Sonardyne has initiated a collaborative project to drive a major step change in ocean system au- tonomy for long-endurance autonomous underwa- ter vehicles (AUVs). The ambition of the Innovate

UK-supported Precise Positioning for Persistent

AUVs (P3AUV) project is to enable AUVs to op- erate at high levels of navigation performance with less surface support and for longer periods.

With partners L3 ASV and the National Ocean- ography Center (NOC), Sonardyne will focus on longer-term navigational accuracy for AUVs in deep water, while reducing power requirements and increasing autonomy in marine operations.

The P3AUV project will involve trials using So- nardyne’s underwater positioning technology on the NOC’s Autosub Long Range (ALR) and L3

ASV’s C-Worker 7 autonomous surface vehicle (ASV). The NOC’s Autosub Long Range (ALR) with ASV’s C-Worker project, which will include trials in Loch Ness next month, is 7, at Loch Ness, where they will be deployed again this

December, as part of the P3AUV project. due to run until late 2019.

The project will focus on three key areas. One will be in- creasing long-duration navigational accuracy by integrating low- and high-power Inertial Navigation System (INS) sen- sors. “The accuracy of low-power sensors degrades over time and AUVs consequently often have to surface to reinitialize with a GPS