66 force with a mobile ‘bubble’ over the vehicles, the representative explains. In military use, passive direction-finding and radar are essential in most missioncritical use cases, says the company. For broad airspace awareness, passive direction-finding is the best option when range and stealth are required. Hidden Level’s technology has been assessed by the US Government and the Department of Defense as mature. Metron and Cellula Robotics discussed their recent partnership to deliver long-range, long-endurance, AUVs capable of carrying out complex operations requiring flexible payload configurations for covert missions in areas with restricted or denied communications. Metron brings decades of experience as a prime integrator and developer of advanced UUV technology for US defence and commercial applications to the partnership, while Cellula has its family of Solus LR and XR hydrogen fuel cellpowered, long-endurance AUVs. The result is a class of fully autonomous UUVs that can be produced cost-effectively at scale, with flexible energy/power options and payload capacity for high-priority missions. Christine Judd, vice-president of Metron’s uncrewed systems division, believes their Resilient Mission Autonomy technology is distinguished from competitors’ offerings in two key areas. “First, our approach to autonomy has always focused on communicationsdenied, navigationally challenged environments. Most competitors developed their autonomy with a human in the loop, where the platform calls for help if something goes wrong. We developed our software from the get-go without a human in the loop, building in onboard decision-making from the start.” The second area of distinction is Metron’s 40-year history of delivering advanced software and sensor solutions that successfully manage uncertainty. “Our ability to process and utilise realtime or near real-time sensor data in our active mission plan is different. Most people make a plan, start to execute it, and try to adjust it when the platform has to cope with unexpected events,” she says. “Today, most autonomous software will abort, come to the surface and call for help when something unexpected occurs. Metron’s Resilient Mission Autonomy will make small adjustments throughout the mission – and there is a threshold to what that means – but if we encounter something above that threshold, we replan on the fly, at depth and in-situ from scratch without any human input, making the process more robust.” Founded in 2001, Canadian company Cellula Robotics recently opened a US arm based in Houston. It has a portfolio of proven UUVs for mission-critical defence, civil and commercial operations, including in the offshore energy sector. “Recently, Cellula expanded into hydrogen fuel cell-powered vehicles to extend the range and endurance of UUV operations,” says CEO Neil Manning. “For this partnership, Cellula’s Solus LR and XR vehicles will be integrated with Metron’s autonomy for specific customers in offshore energy and US defence.” Solus XR is an extra-large uncrewed underwater vehicle (XLUUV) that measures 12 m long and 1.7 x 1.7 m in cross-section, displacing 25.5 t when submerged. It has a range of 5,000 km or an endurance of up to 45 days, depending on the mission. The vehicle weighs less than 10 t in air, allowing standard dock cranes and small ships to handle it, and it fits into a standard, 40 ft shipping container, says Manning. “Solus XR’s modular features are an important differentiator, especially as mission parameters change. Currently, the XR has flexible, standard noses and tails that can attach to mission-specific centre sections, while other modules housing extra hydrogen tanks can be attached underneath to increase the range to about 8,000 km,” he explains. Both companies will conduct a series of in-water demonstrations for energy and defence customers this summer. Ocius Technology discussed one of its Bluebottle solar-, sail- and wavepropelled USVs (previously detailed in issue 51) with a small, towed array sonar from autonomous maritime surveillance and offshore solutions provider ThayerMahan, a combination jointly developed by the two companies. Ocius CEO Robert Dane says the 22 ft Bluebottle can be launched from a boat ramp in a remote area by local people and carry out a mission lasting 60-90 days at a “disruptively low” cost. In operations based in northern Australia, Bluebottle has made 450-mile transits to Ashmore Reef near Indonesia, an area often transited by people smugglers. “We’ve been able to transit from Darwin, stay a month out there, and keep a continuous coverage of that island for about $3,000 a day, compared to the cost of a manned ship, which would be about $90,000 a day.” Integration of the sonar array, called Outpost, increases the range at which the system can detect boats with noisy propellers, says Dane. “We can see something on radar at 5-10 nautical miles, but we can hear it at 20 nautical miles, which gives us an extra detection capability.” The towed array consists of 100 m of 10 mm-diameter cable, which is normally installed with the winch on a boat’s transom in a package weighing about 150 kg. On the Bluebottle, however, the winch is fitted into the keel with the cable wrapped around a “bicycle wheel”, which deploys and retrieves it. One of the two Bluebottles demonstrated at the show was deployed off Point Loma, about 16 nautical miles from the coast of San Diego, with its array at a depth of 250 ft monitoring marine traffic. A live feed from the USV brought the sonar waterfall display to a screen in the show’s demo area, revealing a number of strong contacts as distinct vertical lines on different bearings relative to the array. “We’ve spent four days here now, and I can pretty confidently tell you that nothing has come in and out of San Diego August/September 2024 | Uncrewed Systems Technology
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