Issue 37 Unmanned Systems Technology April/May 2021 Einride next-gen Pod l Battery technology l Dive Technologies AUV-Kit l UGVs insight l Vanguard EFI/ETC vee twins l Icarus Swarms l Transponders l Sonobot 5 l IDEX 2021 report

49 Dive Technologies AUV-Kit | Digest models for simulating and optimising buoyancy, power, drag, hydrodynamic control and the vehicle controller, before conducting offshore trials and operations. Future plans At the time of writing, Dive Technologies was focused on integrating various new sensors into the Dive-LD. Top of its list is a Kraken MINSAS 120 sidescan synthetic aperture sonar, which will enable surveys with a 1.9 x 2.1 cm constant resolution across the survey swathes, along with ranges of up to 200 m on either side of the vehicle, and simultaneous 6 x 6 cm bathymetry. “We are also working on integrating and testing a robust payload package that will include a sidescan sonar, sub-bottom profiler, multi-beam echo sounder, and magnetometer,” Lebo says. “This package will allow us to meet offshore wind survey specifications, and we plan to demonstrate this capability through sea trials this year.” Dive Technologies is also working on its next official model derived from their AUV-Kit, the Dive-XL, a larger system designed for what the company calls “ultra-long range capability” for customers in the commercial and defence markets. Initially these users are likely to include the US Department of Defense and DARPA (who Dive Technologies is already working with), and in the future Dive expects foreign navies, wind farm surveyors, subsea cable and pipeline monitoring teams, and deep- sea mineral prospectors to be interested in the craft. The company also has customers who are using the AUV-Kits to design AUVs with power sources other than pure battery- electric drives (with fuel cells as a prominent example), as well as different thrusters. Sgobbo adds that they are seeing considerable interest in the platform being used to demonstrate next-generation sensors, comms systems, navigation architectures and autonomy solutions. These have been difficult to transfer from the laboratory environment to sea testing, because of the costs associated with traditional AUV manufacturing. Such power options will be particularly important for powering manipulator and extended hovering systems, as maritime companies seek autonomous vehicles capable of replacing ROVs for industrial inspections and repairs. Dive aims to produce and showcase these options in the next few years. Unmanned Systems Technology | April/May 2021 Dive-LD AUV (initial variant of AUV-Kit) Dimensions: 5.8 x 1.2 m Dry weight: 6000 lb (2722 kg) Power: Battery-electric Energy storage: 93 kWh Maximum endurance: 10 days Maximum thrust: 6 kW Maximum speed: 8 knots Maximum depth: 6000 m Some key suppliers Acoustic modems: Sonardyne Acoustic positioning systems: Sonardyne Additive manufacturing: Additive Engineering Solutions Batteries: Kraken Robotics Coating materials: Sabic Inertial navigation systems: Sonardyne Servos: 2G Engineering Synthetic aperture sonar: Kraken Robotics Thrusters: Tecnadyne Vehicle controller: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University’s Center for Marine Autonomy & Robotics Advanced autonomy systems: Metron Specifications The customisability of the AUV-Kit is motivating many of its end-users to try out next-generation subsystems including new sensors, comms and hydrogen fuel cells