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vessel-type USVs, as the smoother ride reduces fatigue and harm to any crew as much as it does to onboard hardware. “We’re going to start by turning a well- known Rafnar ship into one capable of unmanned operation,” explains Lee Drinkwater, Al Seer’s head of business development and strategy. “This platform, the Embla, previously travelled 1300 nautical miles from Reykjavik to Gothenburg in a single trip. Following this initial collaboration, the Rafnar hulls will be available to choose as a design feature for all our USVs going forward, hopefully. “The design itself is completely scalable, so depending on end-user requirements it could be designed into a 5, 10 or 15 m platform.” Advances in key technologies such as high-bandwidth comms and situational awareness sensors such as radar, Lidar, forward-looking sonar and stereo imaging sensors are cited as core drivers of the development of Al Seer’s USVs, both for defence and commercial applications. These advances have also driven the development of USV systems elsewhere in the Gulf region, with Al Marakeb Boat Company for example having unveiled its B7X craft earlier this year. The boat uses AIS, radar and EO/IR sensors for collision avoidance alerts, and can be monitored and operated from different locations around the world. The new system differs notably from its predecessor, the B7, by providing a cockpit to house a human operator. Switching between control modes will be a flexible design choice for USVs | Insight Al Marakeb’s B7X houses a cockpit for a human operator, to enable switching between manned and unmanned operation (Courtesy of Al Marakeb)