50 Founded in January 2020, Bedrock Ocean Exploration’s original ambition was the scalable and efficient collection of high-quality oceanological data, inspired by the concerns and challenges regarding the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, and the need to better understand and protect our seas. The company did not, however, envisage designing and engineering its own AUV. “To start with, we thought the most logical plan to market was to buy an off-the-shelf AUV, run third-party mission-planning and control software on it, and focus on writing a higher-level system governor, sensor integrations and automated data analysis infrastructure to get to market sooner,” recounts Bedrock’s CEO and CTO, Charles Chiau. “First, we had trouble finding a good number of vendors whose products had the qualifications and price points we wanted. There were also great systems that we couldn’t afford or were too big. Then we ran into the perennial integration challenges of getting different suppliers’ electronics to interface together smoothly. “We quickly started just ripping pieces out of our systems and subsystems, removing boards, [and] bypassing software, propulsion and actuation components, and so on that we didn’t like, because they either weren’t helping us meet performance targets or they were getting in the way of us controlling and fine-tuning the AUV’s development.” Before they knew it, Chiau and his fellow engineers had rebuilt the entire vehicle system into their own creation, from the batteries and propulsion to payloads, GNC (guidance, navigation If you’re mapping the oceans, why not design your own AUV to do it? One company did just that, as Rory Jackson finds out The magnificent seven August/September 2024 | Uncrewed Systems Technology
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