NATO’s CMRE Uses Unmanned Systems to Track Fast Boats
Photo: CMRE.
NATO’s Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation, based in La Spezia, Italy, has demonstrated a method of detecting fast boats by using two types of unmanned maritime vehicles.
The system uses an underwater glider and Liquid Robotics’ Wave Glider, a vehicle that combines an underwater vehicle and an unmanned surface vessel. Using a passive sonar system, the vehicles were able to detect fast boats, which usually have small radar signatures and are hard to track.
“CMRE has been the first to demonstrate a complete system for underwater acoustic surveillance with highly persistent mobile robots. In the future, these systems could be used within a network to continuously monitor maritime areas of interest,” the lab said in announcing the results of the effort, which ended in June.
The project also adapted the Wave Glider for shallow coastal waters by adding inexpensive daylight and thermal cameras and radar systems to the platform.
The work was done as part of the European project PERSEUS, which stands for Protection of European BoRders and Seas, which was coordinated by Spain’s Indra.
