What's next for the Pentagon after the Replicator programme?
Although the Replicator initiative has made several accomplishments, there are still multiple gaps to plug across the US Department of Defense (DoD) and its services.
ECA Group working on SWARMs project
ECA Group is working on the Smart and Networking Underwater Robots in Cooperation Meshes (SWARMs) project and will lead work on three different packages, the company announced on 6 September.
The three-year $19.34 million European project was launched in July 2015 and involves 35 partners from ten countries. The project's main goal is to make autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), remotely operated underwater vehicles (ROVs) and unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) more accessible and useful to a wider range of maritime and offshore industries.
Technologies being investigated include developing new cooperative autonomous meshes using heterogeneous AUVs, ROVs and USVs; real time environmental recognition and sensing capabilities; advanced decision making environment system based on imaging recognition algorithms; and an underwater communication framework.
The company is providing its A9 AUV equipped with an interferometric sidescan sonar and an embedded computer in order to analyse in real time the quality of the depth soundings in order to modify mission parameters and optimise the quality of the survey. ECA is also involved in the development of algorithms for sonar image registration to improve positioning and navigation during repeated missions over the same area by one or multiple vehicles of different types.
ECA will participate in an underwater test in the Canary Islands with the A9 in September 2016. The test aims to prove the scientific and theoretical input of the past year.
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