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45 allowing them to concentrate on their own expertise without the need to develop an entire underwater vehicle. “That will allow companies, researchers or governmental organisations to use unmanned underwater technology at a fraction of the development time and costs associated with less modular types of UUV.” Boeck’s team envisions the MUM’s individual modules as being transportable in 10-20 ft containers and assembled in ports, potentially replacing manned surface vessels typically used to ferry, launch and recover such craft far from the shore. While researchers at TU Berlin will work through 2019 on the designs of mission modules and simulations of the system, Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems will be acting as project coordinator, developing the basic module designs and the overall UUV architecture. Atlas Elektronik will develop the autonomy systems for guidance and collision avoidance, while the University of Rostock will develop the fault-tolerant controls and prediction systems for motion. The autonomy will be used for transit outside harbours and missions that require no interaction with infrastructure, such as deploying or recovering seismic nodes. Docking and manoeuvring in harbours, as well as missions such as exchanging control modules or inspecting offshore constructs, will be conducted via remote operation, potentially using tethered buoys running between the UUV and the surface for real-time satellite-to-subsea comms. Another collaborator, EvoLogics, will develop an acoustic ultra-short baseline (USBL) carrier AUV. A typical MUM will be able to carry several of these in a module, and deploy them as a USBL swarm of transceiver and transponder vehicles. They will provide a continuous navigation fix, with external acoustic positioning data fused with internal inertial sensor data before returning to the MUM and docking. For easier docking, the mothership UUV’s design will incorporate fully flooded internal hulls, preventing the need for airlocks when launching and recovering the USBL AUVs and any other mission craft the operators might want to carry on board the MUM. As the various modules are being developed, the control algorithms and design philosophy will be tested on a quarter-scale functional concept model of the MUM, starting this summer. This will continue through to April 2020, by which time the developers hope to have validated the various core technologies and delivered feasible designs for the vehicle and its systems. Construction and testing the full-scale prototype will end in 2023 or 2024. The full-scale prototype could weigh anywhere between 80 and 300 tonnes depending on the modules equipped, and range from 20 m in length, 4 m wide and 3 m tall to about 50 m long, 7 m wide and 3 m high. Power consumption will depend strongly on the propulsion speed and payloads, which could include installing or swapping subsea control modules or deploying critical deep-sea machinery such as seismic nodes or drilling rigs. These payloads will weigh hundreds of tonnes and could consume up to 160 kW each. To supply the necessary power density, Thyssenkrupp will provide hydrogen fuel cells. “Hydrogen fuel cells are a proven air- independent technology for Thyssenkrupp submarines,” says Willem Hendrik Wehner, naval architect at Thyssenkrupp. “More than 30 submarines are already equipped with these systems, with more orders on the way.” “Our fuel cell system has efficiencies of more than 50%, and the volumetric and gravimetric energy densities are superior to today’s battery systems. The MUM project will use this knowledge to develop an evolved and tailored fuel cell system for large UUVs.” In another development in heavy industry, 2018 saw Houston Mechatronics receive $20 million in Series B funding to finish its prototype of the Aquanaut hybrid UUV, with the investment co-led by offshore drilling contractor Transocean and oilfield services company Schlumberger. UUVs | Insight Fuel cells are a proven air- independent technology for our submarines. More than 30 subs are already fitted with them Unmanned Systems Technology | February/March 2019