get before needing to return for a battery swap. It can then be placed in the water – 2 m deep and 1 m in front of the user is recommended – and it will wait there until the user commands it to start the mission. During the mission, all data is stored inside the uOne in a solid-state drive (SSD) device and can be retrieved by wi-fi or wired ethernet (or by retrieving the SSD) between missions. Postmission, the data can be downloaded to the user’s device and sent to uWare’s cloud storage server (with around 100 GB of data collected during longer missions). “The cloud storage server connects with two other cloud-based servers. One generates visualisations for users, building 3D models, GNSS-estimated orthomosaics and those kinds of valuable data products, and also applying deeplearning algorithms for analytics to highlight, plus geo-tag cracks, seagrass, underwater ruins and other features, which users might find important,” Garcia says. “The user can access and download all of those freely, along with all the stereo and bottom [camera] video captured, graphs of water pressures and temperatures recorded over time, and so on. “The other is an internal server, dedicated to building our machinelearning pipelines, through which we further refine our models, not just for smarter vision but for features like navigating more efficiently amid strong currents or thick seagrass.” Data within days Processing the data via the cloud can now be accomplished within a couple of days (compared with weeks in some cases), although uWare plans to offer faster processing times in the future. “Programming cloud functions isn’t very different to programming a robot. You’re just dealing with another level of communication and different constraints. In the robot we have limited resources, but with cloud providers we can just spin new instances as we go,” Garcia explains. “That means we’ll face different pricings, but at [the] day’s end it’s all about programming processes and data exchanges carefully.” Arteaga adds: “Coming from robotics, we tend to think in different abstraction layers. We think of modular systems and subsystems, electronic parts talking with mechanical parts, and software running in the middle. A cloud isn’t too different: a server runs software, which talks to another software program on another server. We, as engineers, can be agnostic to what we’re building, programming and optimising; if enough information is successfully coming through, that means it works.” Into the future With the uOne now at commercial technical readiness, uWare is focused on advancing the intelligence of its AUV and data analytics. “It might sound strange, but we’re starting to discover a new world of possibilities of what we can do with the data that we and our users gather, and bringing robots like ours to different users around the world is honestly going to open something of a new era of working and intervening underwater,” Arteaga says. “That’s going to bring a lot of benefits for safeguarding oceans and coasts against damage from wars or human-made accidents, and tracking the effects of climate change to plan disaster-response efforts and marine restoration activities.” 35 Uncrewed Systems Technology | February/March 2024 uOne AUV Battery-electric Cast acrylic hull Dimensions: 50 x 40 x 40 cm Maximum weight in air: 18 kg Payload capacity: 5 kg Maximum speed: 3 knots Operating speed: 0.5 knots Maximum endurance: 3 hours Maximum environmental operating temperatures: 0-35 C Some key suppliers Thrusters: Blue Robotics Watertight enclosures: Blue Robotics Barometer: Blue Robotics Data processing and logging computer: NVIDIA Main navigation and control unit: Raspberry Pi IMU: Bosch DVL: Water Linked Transducer: DSPComm Bottom-looking camera: DeepWater Exploration Specifications Missions can be monitored through either the end-user’s own devices or a topside computer offered by uWare uOne | Dossier
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