Uncrewed Systems Technology 048 | Kodiak Driver | 5G focus | Tiburon USV | Skypersonic Skycopter and Skyrover | CES 2023 | Limbach L 2400 DX and L 550 EFG | NXInnovation NX 100 Enviro | Solar power focus | Protegimus Protection

95 to be carried in the back of a truck or hatchback, driven at high speed, dropped in the water and still operate smoothly,” Lee notes. The result of these requirements, and considerable work by NXInnovation, is the NX 100 Enviro USV, a catamaran capable of operating autonomously or in remotely piloted mode, and now proven in numerous aquatic clean-up missions. “For instance, we’ve successfully performed quite a few clean-ups of the Henderson Creek, one of the estuaries running into Auckland’s harbour, which is notorious for being an inroad for quite a lot of the pollution that afflicts the city,” Lee says. “It goes through an industrial area, as well as quite a few residential areas where storm water run-off comes from. “Also, we’ve sold a unit to Westhaven Marina, the largest marina in New Zealand. They’ve had it successfully running regular clean-ups for just over a year now, generally close to the piers but also in areas of water that are harder to access physically.” Development history The first ideas for the Enviro came in 2012. Lee himself comes from a boatbuilding background and has around 30 years of experience in that regard, through which he became familiar with the use of miniaturised components along the lines of those used in USVs. “I tend to envision newboats fairly quickly, and since this solution needed to be small I finished the first prototype in around a month,” he says. “It was a little fibreglass boat, for which I’d built the construction moulds and all the other tooling. “It was fairly conventional, with electric motors and COTS propellers and rudders, and worked just fine while using a decent net of around 150 litre capacity. We sent it up the Henderson Creek, and saw that other than having a very wide turning radius, it collected rubbish really well.” Being surprised at the ease and simplicity with which they’d achieved their solution, Lee and his colleagues researched alternative approaches but found nothing. He notes that Ranmarine (first featured in UST 11, December 2016/ January 2017) later began making public announcements after starting development of its own litter-collecting Waste Shark USV in 2012 – an example of two eco-friendly solutions with similar aims being developed on opposite sides of the planet at the same time. “Theirs and ours were the only solutions being developed for uncrewed aquatic sanitation for many years, but our development struggled for a while because New Zealand’s geographical isolation makes it hard for anyone here to draw attention for funding tech start-ups, despite having no shortage of innovators here,” Lee recounts. “Eventually though we got a grant through the Gulf Innovation Fund Together programme from Foundation North, which in 2016 had resolved to push for technology and volunteers to clean up the Hauraki Gulf, which is the greater body of water that Auckland’s harbour connects with and is a major wildlife habitat in which plastic pollution as well as overfishing are severe concerns. That funded the development of our second prototype a few years later.” NXInnovation chose to go bigger NXInnovation NX 100 Enviro | In operation We wanted to make the solution small and rugged enough to be carried in the back of a truck or hatchback, dropped in the water and still operate smoothly Uncrewed Systems Technology | February/March 2023 Among NXInnovation’s customers is Westhaven Marina, the largest of its kind in New Zealand, which used the Enviro 100 for more than a year to clean near piers and other areas