Friday 8 June 2018

SeaRobotics Corporation announced the delivery of two additional 2.5 meter autonomous unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) to the Canadian Hydrographic Service (CHS), a part of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, bringing the fleet to four systems. These USVs, built by SeaRobotics, are complete hydrographic systems including multibeam echo sounders, support sensors, cast winches, deployment carts and road trailers.

The SeaRobotics USVs are being deployed across Canada supported by regional training performed by SeaRobotics. CHS has completed the first year of operation and the analysis of the efficiency and cost effectiveness of USV usage. A profile of high-productivity, cost-reducing activities is being developed for both traditional survey tasks and survey tasks in previously denied, and currently unsurveyed, areas.

These systems leverage SeaRobotics’ extensive expertise and history delivering USVs for high-precision bathymetric surveys, water quality analysis, hydrographic surveys, shallow water, force multiplier and many other applications. The USVs were delivered with a fully integrated R2Sonic multi-beam echo sounder (MBES), associated motion reference unit and dual antenna RTK GPS system, as well as a surface sound velocity probe and a cast winch deploying a CTD—all tightly integrated with HYPACK software.