AUV rapid environmental assessment exercise conducted

OceanServer Technology's Iver2 autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) has served as a payload platform to demonstrate improvements for both sonar and magnetic sensor data collection and subsequent ‘in-stride’ and post-mission data analysis methods for naval applications. The work is being conducted by a team of industry technology providers in San Diego.

The objective of the cooperative exercise is to demonstrate the ways in which recent advances in this technology might apply to naval survey applications. Technical representatives from the US and Canadian Navies were present, as were companies including EdgeTech, L-3 Klein, Marine Magnetics, and SeeByte.

The exercise saw a total of thirty-seven individual AUV missions conducted, simulating battlefield data collection methods, which provided a variety of high-resolution imagery and validated recent sonar/platform integration projects.

At the week's end, and in subsequent briefings, the full data sweep was imported to SeeByte’s SeeTrack Military software and ultimately into the navy's Common Operator Interface for Navy EOD.

Bob Anderson, OceanServer Technology, said: ‘It is encouraging to see our collaboration with SeeByte producing such successful results. SeeByte's customers, including the US Navy, can now benefit from the Iver2, a single man-portable AUV capable of carrying leading side-scan sonars and magnetic sensors, as the AUV is now fully compatible with SeeByte’s software. Such instruments are vital when carrying out Rapid Environmental Assessment work.’