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49 to operate reliably, and they’re far more prone to failure than a lot of people realise. We wanted to make a UUV to democratise ocean data and analytics across anything from coral reefs to subsea infrastructure, and in any market, be it environmental regulation, undersea cinematography or what have you.” As of its unveiling at the Oceanology International London show in March, the Hydrus had two launch customers. One is Australian billionaire and philanthropist Andrew Forrest, who has written at length about his wish to use fleets of robotic measuring systems to survey and hence protect ocean ecosystems, and who sees the Hydrus as a potentially ideal part of that. The other is Thales, which plans to load some of its own AI capabilities into the UUV’s open architecture to identify and classify marine life, to track, count and study different species. Hydrus history The first concept discussions for the Hydrus began 8 years ago, with Advanced Navigation’s intention having long been to perfect its capabilities in acoustic systems – which it pursued through its Subsonus and Subsonus Tag USBL technologies – before developing entire vehicles. “Our initial drawings came in a few months after the first discussions,” Orr notes. “That early concept just looked like a standard, torpedo-type AUV, but obviously it’s changed a lot since then owing to extensive r&d. “That’s primarily because the Hydrus has been packaged around its subsystems. Rather than taking a torpedo with fixed dimensions and trying to stuff what we could inside, we wanted the most advanced sonar, navigation and comms capabilities possible, all tightly integrated within a design. So the shape of the hull works around all the internal systems’ footprints and requirements.” The first prototype was produced about 4 years ago, with considerable testing and development to inform the many hardware iterations it had been through since then to bring it to production readiness. Manufacturing is currently organised around producing 20 units at a time, but there are plans to increase that in the future. Advanced Navigation Hydrus | Digest Unmanned Systems Technology | April/May 2022 The Hydrus is a 4.7 kg (in air) craft designed for underwater tasks that can be carried out by operators without extensive training (Images courtesy of Advanced Navigation)