Sonardyne demonstrates tech that will help autonomous vehicle ops in challenging environments

May 26, 2020 | AUVSI News

Under a project funded by the UK’s national Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA), Sonardyne International Ltd. demonstrated technologies that it says will help autonomous vehicle operations in challenging environments.

Sonardyne worked with a 12-meter-long SEA-KIT X class USV, and tested and validated sensors already used by UUVs for use on USVs in support of missions in coastal waters.

The SEA-KIT X was equipped with Sonardyne’s SPRINT-Nav hybrid inertial navigation instrument, which was tested against local real-time kinematic (RTK) GPS positioning as part of the DASA program to fast-track autonomous vehicle capability in challenging or harsh conditions.

Sonardyne notes that in areas where GPS or GNSS receivers may not have a clear line of sight with the sky such as in ports and harbors around tall structures or close to cliffs or inside fjords, satellite-based timing signals needed for navigation and positioning can be lost. Deliberate signal jamming or degrading of performance, known as spoofing, can also cause a loss of satellite-based timing signals.

“Most USVs rely on uninterrupted GPS or GNSS signal updates to inform their situational awareness and plot a course safely. When there’s no signal, or what’s called spoofing or jamming, USVs must consider alternative navigation sensors and instruments or they need to be remotely piloted adding expense and risk to over-the-horizon operations,” explains Ioseba Tena, Global Business manager, Defence and Marine Robotics at Sonardyne.

“By integrating SPRINT-Nav onto a USV, such as SEA-KIT, we have shown we can overcome this challenge, providing a continuous and resilient navigation in denied environments capability that will be ideally suited to challenging operations such as mine-counter measures (MCM).”

Thus far, Sonardyne’s SPRINT-Nav has been proven as a reliable navigation instrument for UUVs, which operate in what is effectively a GPS or GNSS denied environment. The instrument will now also be used to provide a high integrity, continuously available navigation technology for a USV such as the SEA-KIT X, operating in littoral zones in water depths up to 150 meters.

Capable of carrying up to 2.5 tons of payload, SEA-KIT is a 10,000 nautical mile-range vessel that can deploy and recover UUVs and ROVs, making the vessel ideal for supporting naval missions including intelligence gathering, hydrographic survey and as a communications gateway.