Sonardyne kits out Dive Technologies AUV

Subsea robotics innovator Dive Technologies has chosen a complete suite of Sonardyne technologies for navigation, tracking and control of its large displacement DIVE-LD autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) programme.

The DIVE-LD AUV could meet a wide range of long-endurance mission requirements, across the commercial, research and defence sectors.

To support long-distance and long-duration navigation, while minimising complexity and payload space consumption, the vehicle comes with Sonardyne’s hybrid navigator SPRINT-Nav.

For underwater positioning and acoustic communications, the DIVE-LD comes with Sonardyne’s AvTrak 6 – a combined transponder, modem and emergency relocator beacon all in one.

To cover all its concepts of operations (CONOPS), including tracking and communication during development and testing, Dive Technologies has also acquired Sonardyne’s most capable Ultra-Short BaseLine (USBL) system, Ranger 2, with its latest, compact Gyro USBL.

The DIVE-LD AUV, measuring 48 inches in diameter and 19 feet long and designed for operations down to 6,000 metres water depth, currently in production in the US with sea testing ongoing in New Bedford.

“With a new development effort underway for Dive Technologies’ DIVE-LD autonomous underwater vehicle, we had a wide range of use cases in mind and needed a single system capable of supporting the various mission sets we had in mind.

“We also needed a topside system which could scale in functionality and complexity with our vehicle as we continue to add features and capabilities, from our initial testing where our needs were just tracking and emergency commands, to more advanced features such as USBL aiding and SMS transmission of vehicle and data health metrics.

“Ranger 2 is a good fit for both of these needs and it has enabled us to meet our challenging goals of simultaneous development and testing while maintaining consistent and impressive performance even in challenging operating conditions.”