Source: NOC
picture of world globe + the words national oceanographic center
An increasing need for long endurance autonomous surface vehicles (ASVs) emerged e.g. for climate changes, the fish population, pollution at ear, gathering information for weather stations, conductions defense operations and for acoustic, photographic and video data harvesting for various other applications. The aim of the pre-commercial procurement (PCP) was therefore to develop cheap, energy efficient and reliable long-endurance unmanned surface vehicles that are capable of operating autonomously in ocean waters over long distances (up to 100 nautical miles) and for more long time periods (up to 90 days). The vehicles had to be able to use both existing and new sensor technology to gather data from beneath and above the ocean surface.
5 tenderers were awarded £50,000 phase 1 contracts: MOST Ltd, Blue Bear Ltd, the University of Aberystwyth, Intrepid Minds Limited and ASV Ltd. As the concepts of ASV Ltd and MOST Ltd were most promising, these two companies continued to phase 2 and were awarded £390,000 each to develop based on their concept a prototype that would be capable of undertaking demonstration missions at sea.
In June 2014 the two vehicles, MOST Ltd’s AutoNaut and ASV’s C-Enduro, were showcased successfully to the marine community at the NOC in Southampton. The NOC announced at this time that it would be purchasing one of each vehicle for continued trials and development. Still today, the NOC is using both systems as they are complementary in their capabilities. As this first pre-commercial procurement of the National Oceanography center (NOC) was such a success, a year later they undertook a second follow-up PCP to develop novel adaptive autonomous ocean sampling network management systems. Both companies that completed the PCP have had considerable success in their sector and are selling the autonomous surface vehicles that they developed during the PCP in the market.
More information in the full case description.