Nauticus Robotics this week announced it completed a live offshore demonstration of an autonomous vehicle to help clear subsea mines at greater distances, passing the first phase of a Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) program.
In February 2022, DIU commissioned Nauticus to modify an existing mine countermeasure platform into an untethered autonomous drone “to remotely identify and neutralize subsea mines and other targets of interest and take U.S. Navy EOD divers out of harm’s way in the process.”
This falls under the DIU’s Autonomous Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Maritime Response Vehicle (AEMRV) program. AEMRV is one of two programs Nauticus has with DIU.
Nauticus said it integrated its software package, called toolKITT, into a Navy VideoRay Mission Specialist Defender Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV). The live test event occurred in San Diego, Calif., whereupon it successfully moved on to the next state of the AEMRV program.
The company underscored its AI-enabled toolKITT software allowed untethered vehicle operations “while adhering to open architecture principles.”
“Our premier software platform, toolKITT, will enable the U.S. Navy to use an enhanced, autonomous vehicle with state-of-the-art adaptive functionality. We are honored to have been given the opportunity and deliver on providing the U.S. Navy with a revolutionary underwater vehicle behaviors that optimizes both functionality and safety,” Nicolaus Radford, CEO of Nauticus, said in a statement.
Nauticus said this modified ROV can allow Navy EOD divers to perform identifying and neutralizing mine missions at “greater stand-off distances than previously thought possible.”
The company said its capabilities add untethered operations, autonomous operations with AI to help classify objects and execute tasks without direct human commands, computer AI vision that automatically detects objects of interest, and use of open architecture to allow modularity and optimize vehicle function.
Subsequently and separately, the second DIU unmanned program began in October 2022, when the unit awarded contracts to Nauticus and Greensea Systems to compete on prototypes to help the Marine Corps clear shallow water mines in a competitive rapid prototyping effort (Defense Daily, Oct. 13, 2022).
The Marine Corps mine clearing effort aims to deliver prototype vehicles to the service by this fall.