This year, RS Aqua teamed up with innovative unmanned solutions provider Maritime Robotics to supply an Otter Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) fitted with a comprehensive hydrographic and bathymetric survey suite, to a high-profile defence customer in the UK. The customer required an unmanned vehicle for mapping, imaging, and situational awareness data gathering, in addition to local UK assistance for commissioning, training and long-term support.
Given the profile of the customer, Maritime Robotics’ expertise in unmanned surface vehicles and RS Aqua’s established presence in the UK ocean technology market, the collaborative approach between Maritime Robotics in Norway and RS Aqua in the UK was the ideal choice.
The Technology
The Otter USV is an easily deployable turn-key system, proven for seabed mapping and monitoring of sheltered waters. The robust catamaran design and the tightly integrated bathymetric survey sensors make the system an ideal solution for surveys in sheltered waters such as lakes, rivers, canals, harbours, and other inland waterways.
Furthermore, its real time monitoring capabilities and modular design allow for additional sensors to be integrated or expanded as needed.
For this specific project, the Otter was equipped with additional hydrographic and bathymetric sensors including a Norbit multibeam sonar, embedded GNSS/Inertial INS (Applanix Surfmaster), Ping DSP side scan sonar. The vehicle was also outfitted with an Autocast sound velocity profiling (SVP) winch system, making it a complete solution for hydrographic and bathymetric surveying.
RS Aqua
RS Aqua were invited by the customer to identify, specify, and deliver a complete USV survey system to meet the tight specifications for survey capability in a compact package, scalable for future requirements. The Maritime Robotics Otter USV system was selected by RS Aqua because of the excellent track record and maturity of the system.
The specified survey solution and comprehensive training offered through RS Aqua complemented the overall offer, which will allow the customer to transition to autonomous or unmanned operations for various defence and humanitarian scenarios, realising cost savings, increasing efficiency, and improving safety for operators.
Maritime Robotics
Kristoffer Fortun, Chief Sales Officer at Maritime Robotics is extremely happy to have secured this contract together with RS Aqua for such an important customer. He commented:
“The collaboration between RS Aqua and Maritime Robotics worked flawlessly from day one and both companies really focused on putting the customer first. We are very pleased that our solution was chosen for such a high profile end user.
We often see in market competitions that our products are chosen when the customer’s requirements are high, and the conditions tough and this order was no exception. It proved once again that our products can deliver to the highest of standards to customers for whom only the best is good enough.”
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