Frazer-Nash is one of five organisations that have been awarded
contracts as part of a £250,000 competition to improve ocean
research methods using robot technology.
Five proposals have each been awarded £50,000 to develop an
integrated system for the National Oceanography Centre that will
coordinate a suite of autonomous systems - such as a fleet of
gliders - to gather data over a period of months at sea. The
successful bidders now have three months to produce a workable
concept.
Frazer-Nash was awarded a Phase One contract, with the University
of Exeter, SeeByte Ltd, Marine South East, and RED Scientific also
being successful.
Frazer-Nash has been involved in developing new concepts for
future unmanned systems, and is a leader in the safety,
certification and regulation of civil and military autonomous
systems.
The competition was launched last year by the Natural Environment
Research Council (NERC) with Innovate UK 's Small Business Research
Initiative (SBRI), in partnership with the Defence Science and
Technology Laboratory (Dstl).
Geraint West, Director of National Marine Facilities at the
National Oceanography Centre (NOC) said: "Unmanned surface
vehicles, underwater gliders and autonomous submarines are already
delivering observations in the open ocean over timescales of weeks
and months. Building on the success of our previous Small Business
Research Initiative, the aim is to work with industry to move
unmanned autonomous technology further forward and develop a
network that can respond to changing situations in an integrated
way."
"The ocean is a dynamic, rapidly changing environment that is a
challenge for scientists measuring features like ocean fronts,
pollution and plankton blooms that change over time and area.
Developments in robot technology have made this a possibility and
funding is now taking this to the next level."
The competition will assess and develop novel adaptive autonomous ocean sampling network (AAOSN) management systems. Once the five concepts have been presented, those meeting the terms of the competition will be invited to bid for Phase Two of the competition. Two successful proposals will be selected to develop into prototypes and trialed by NOC scientists in marine conditions.