26 As an island nation, dependent on seafaring vessels for trade, defence and more, the UK’s traditions for innovative and robust shipbuilding date back centuries. Small wonder then that today, amid booming demand for automated ocean logistics, security and mass data collection, British shipyards are steadily gearing up to work on a new generation of large, metallic autonomous vessels that stand to revolutionise how the world’s waters are mapped and studied. Much of this was planted in 2015, when the Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE kicked off a bout of professional USV development never seen before. The winning entry, the Sea-Kit USV, came from team GEBCO-Nippon Foundation Alumni (see Issue 38), which included Neil Tinmouth, who served as COO of Sea-Kit International for the next few years. Neil gradually noticed the critical limitations of commercially available USVs, particularly the poor reliability Rory Jackson learns about a heavyweight USV aiming to deliver high-quality data in severe sea states February/March 2025 | Uncrewed Systems Technology Whatever the weather The USV Pioneer is the first of ACUA Ocean’s Pioneer-class H-USVs, conceived as zero-carbon vessels certified for industrial maritime work (All images courtesy of ACUA Ocean)
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