32 “AMC has just about the best reputation in the UK as a combined shipyard and consultative partner. Our design evolution hasn’t been an easy, straight line, and them having the know-how to support and validate our design corrections isn’t the only good thing,” Mike says. “They’ve also been very open and willing to learn with us through the grey areas along the way, which is crucial given how much of Pioneer is unusual, veritably ‘pioneering’ technology.” Most struts and panels of aluminium are bolted or welded together. The latter has been performed by coded welders to ensure MCA approval of the structure, with ACUA working with Lloyd’s Register to ensure routine surveys of the build. “The bigger, wider sections are welded together, while bolts feature most prominently in our patches and in elements of the transverse beams,” Anuyagu says. “That enables us to look very closely at those individual parts of the vessel when we need to, and bolts are amazing things for load transfer in operations, so it makes sense to use them in those otherwise stressed sections.” Pioneer’s two pontoons and four struts were constructed to specifications first, largely from cut and shaped aluminium; their build commencing in March 2024, following the conclusion of their designs in February. The transverse and longitudinal beams followed. The powertrain had been designed and prototyped to the scale of the full build earlier to validate mission-critical parameters such as high-voltage charging and discharging. The power subsystems such as electrical racks and skids were co-developed and built with Trident Marine Electrical. Electronics such as navigational and C5 (command, control, compute, communications and cybersecurity) systems were then selected, and plugged into the power network. “There wasn’t much cable management or integration work back then as there was no vessel to put it all into, but we still needed to test all that hardware and optimise all our code to get the system working, from powertrain to compute systems,” Anuyagu recounts. “So, once we were satisfied that safety and performance could meet code requirements, we packed everything into a freight container and sent it here, to Plymouth. From September, we began the work of mounting its parts and routing cables inside the built vessel.” The view from the top The USV’s capacity to survive at sea has depended on rigorous testing and redundancy. As an example, Anuyagu notes: “Recently we’ve been doing bilge-pump testing. In a crewed vessel that means you just flick a float switch and you look to see if your bilge pump has come on; that’s a closed loop. “But, turning on the bilge pump in an uncrewed system requires automated elements in the PLC code, because there’s no-one onboard to look and confirm if it’s working. First, the USV must recognise the input, then you need it to correctly respond by switching on the bilge pump and, most critically, the system then has to send the current needed by the bilge pump all the way down the line. So there’s multiple stages that need to be examined if the pump doesn’t activate.” Hence, there is scepticism over the ability of USVs to work consistently at sea without ever needing someone to check on them, and the prospect of having to mount a crewed mission to go out, find and retrieve a malfunctioning USV is a sobering one to move past. The mast atop Pioneer’s stern is the most outwardly visible of ACUA Ocean’s countermeasures against such scepticism, with a multitude of redundant systems for navigation, communications and maritime safety. “We’ve got a Teledyne FLIR EO/IR camera that sits atop the mast for above-water survey and situational awareness, and moving down you see a Starlink high-performance flat panel for high-bandwidth satcom,” Mulcahy says. February/March 2025 | Uncrewed Systems Technology The USV’s mast integrates a plethora of antennas, cameras and sensors for ensuring constant, redundant communications, navigation and situational awareness
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