Bluefin Robotics and NRL UUV Sails From Boston to New York 

Image Courtesy of Bluefin Robotics

By Ashley Addington



Bluefin Robotics announced that the company and the Naval Research Laboratory completed a long-endurance glider mission that was more than 100 hours from Boston to New York. The unmanned underwater vehicle used was NRL’s  Reliant “Heavyweight.” The mission was done over several days, and the UUV used its autonomous features and GPS for navigation and tracking. The Reliant was equipped with a sonar payload and a Doppler velocity log.  



The mission was conducted to help further NRL’s research for the U.S. Navy, according to a release by Bluefin. The Reliant is a more advanced version of the Bluefin-21 vehicle. Reliant utilizes Bluefin’s modular vehicle design, which helped the vehicle navigate using fiber-optic gyro-based inertial navigation system. 



For the mission, the team mobilized the vehicle on the Boston Harbor Cruise’s Matthew J. Hughes motor vessel and deployed it outside the harbor. The vehicle traveled at 2.5 knots, 10 meters deep in the water. The Reliant resurfaced every 20 kilometers to readjust the GPS coordinates. After 109 hours of travel and transiting more than 500 kilometers through strong currents, the Reliant finally landed in New York Harbor with a remaining battery of 10 percent. 



The effort was funded by the Office of Naval Research.