Kongsberg Discovery says it has reached “one other profitable milestone” within the growth of its HUGIN Endurance in finishing a “file setting multi-week absolutely autonomous mission”.
After receiving a ultimate navigation replace from a pre-deployed transponder 10 hours into the dive, the 8-ton, 40 ft, Autonomous Underwater Automobile (AUV) operated fully impartial of all human interplay and with no exterior navigation aiding during the sortie.
This mission was performed at depths starting from 50 metres to three,400 metres and met the marketed 1,200 nautical mile vary. Most spectacular of all, was that HUGIN Endurance returned with a place error of roughly 0.02 p.c of whole distance traveled.
The complicated mission plan was designed to validate the design specs of the AUV and put the car by its paces in a real-world atmosphere. The mission consisted of straight-line transits spanning 60-300 nautical mile (nm) legs and survey areas.
The survey areas coated 36nm2 with very excessive decision artificial aperture sonar (SAS) imagery and bathymetry, utilizing Kongsberg’s HISAS 1032 Twin Rx, in lower than 48 hours. Digital camera imagery and laser profiling information was additionally collected, at altitudes all the way down to 9m.
Espen Henriksen, government vp uncrewed platforms division at Kongsberg, says: “The success of this mission proves HUGIN Endurance’s shore-to-shore operational functionality.
“Eradicating the necessity for a floor ship offers an enormous financial savings to our prospects, in each time and assets. We’re pleased with our distinctive crew has been working very laborious so as to add this functionality to our AUV portfolio.”
Wealthy Patterson, vp of gross sales, uncrewed platforms division at Kongsberg, says: “All credit score goes to our phenomenal crew of engineers and operators which have made HUGIN Endurance probably the most succesful AUV in the marketplace.
“The mission we’ve simply accomplished validates the design specs of the system and offers proof that our HUGIN autonomy framework is absolutely able to performing complicated multi-day missions with no human interplay.
“We’re extraordinarily excited concerning the huge operational capabilities we are able to convey to our prospects with HUGIN Endurance.”
Whereas the outcomes of this mission weren’t a shock, they’ve most actually solidified HUGIN Endurance as probably the most succesful AUV platform in the marketplace, prepared for actual mission deployment and operation.