Miniature Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Sonar Excels in Annual Exercise

Kraken Robotics’ MINSAS, integrated onto a range of uncrewed underwater vehicles, found more than 50 mine-like targets during the annual Portuguese Navy REPMUS exercise By Abi Wylie / 08 Oct 2024
Miniature Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Sonar Excels in Annual Exercise
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Kraken Robotics Inc.’s Miniature Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Sonar (MINSAS) was evaluated by five NATO navies at the Portuguese Navy annual Robotic Experimentation and Prototyping with Maritime Unmanned Systems (REPMUS) exercise.

Five Kraken MINSAS modules were integrated onsite to American, Dutch, Swedish, Belgian, and Portuguese uncrewed underwater vehicles (UUVs). These systems combined were able to locate more than 50 mine-like targets over the course of the exercise, including redundant coverages.

Kraken’s MINSAS was used for a wide range of tasks during the exercise including area search and reacquire/identify. Real-time beamforming and georeferencing facilitated the rapid recovery of acquired data from payloads, enabling immediate post-mission analysis of data when the UUVs returned to shore using SeeByte’s SeeTrack C2 System.

Kraken SAS was also used in a multi-national collaborative autonomy exercise to survey mine-like objects in a full ‘Find-Fix-Finish’ mission. SeeByte’s SeeTrack and Neptune collaborative autonomy software, combined with the U.S. Navy’s C2 and TAK (Team Awareness Kit), were used to plan and execute the multi-national exercise. 

Additionally, SeeTrack provided the tasking of a VideoRay Defender remotely operated vehicle to conduct an in-stride digital ‘Finish’.

Taking place in Sesimbra and Troia, Portugal, the 2024 REPMUS exercise spanned from September 9th—27th, bringing together more than 30 nations, 2000 participants, and 100 autonomous assets to enable collaborative development and testing of concepts and requirements in support of multi-domain operations.

Greg Reid, President and CEO of Kraken Robotics, said, “REPMUS has been an invaluable experience for our team at Kraken, providing the opportunity to work directly with end-user navies, demonstrate the capabilities of MINSAS, support the rapid processing of data from multiple missions, and get real-time feedback from users that we can integrate into our product roadmap. 

“Our team supported integration of SAS modules on several different UUV configurations including legacy REMUS systems that were more than 10 years old, the U.S. Navy’s MK-18 Mod 1, REMUS 100 NGR, and a Gavia vehicle. 

“This illustrates the versatility of our technology to be rapidly deployed and exchanged between both new and legacy platforms, providing a significant capability enhancement for mine countermeasure operations from UUVs.”

Posted by Abi Wylie Connect & Contact
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