Kraken Robotics’ AquaPix Miniature Synthetic Aperture Sonar (MINSAS) system has been chosen for HII’s new REMUS 620 Medium Class UUV as the standard payload offering.
Synthetic Aperture Sonar (SAS) offers greater resolution and higher area coverage rates when compared with legacy Side Scan Sonar, and hence serves as an option for mine countermeasure (MCM) operations.
According to Kraken, higher resolution imagery correlates to the cut down in false positives by human operators as well as Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) software.
Through advanced capabilities offered by the collaboration of the REMUS 620 and MINSAS Synthetic Aperture Sonar, the count of contacts needed to be authenticated gets cut down, thereby potentially reducing MCM timeline significantly.
The company’s SAS products have been integrated to HII’s uncrewed systems range of small, medium and large AUVs, providing several opportunities to boost the Mine Hunting and MCM capabilities for several NATO nations.
MINSAS’s system design makes it suitable match for the REMUS 620’s modular payload and battery architecture given that it can provide both 60 cm and 120 cm array offerings as per customer’s requirements, thereby creating room for extra sensor or battery payloads as required.
The system is also claimed to offer out-of-the-box high-resolution, real-time onboard beamforming that supports embedded ATR, and smart autonomy features such as dynamic mission re-tasking as per the identification of contacts.
Earlier this month, Kraken Robotics secured a prime contract from the Government of Canada to provide Remote Minehunting and Disposal Systems for the Department of National Defense.
