Autonomous Unmanned Vessels for Maritime Mine Countermeasures Operations

The MULTIMETER project aims to advance unmanned mine countermeasure (MCM) operations by developing an autonomous unmanned surface vessel (USV) with underwater sensing capabilities. Building on the MCMLab funding, MULTIMETER focuses on cost-effective innovation to enhance MCM operations. Key objectives include:

- Implementing an Open System Standard Architecture (OSSA) for autonomous USV operations.
- Installing sonar for AI-based automated mine detection.
- Enabling long-term, fully autonomous inspections of underwater and critical maritime infrastructure.
- Integrating vehicle-to-infrastructure communication with sensors on maritime assets to enhance situational awareness.
- Training Navy officers on a user-friendly command-and-control system for real-time vessel management.
- Using a robust Exail USV for operations in sea state 5, enabling realistic tests and technology development for Belgian Navy deployment.
- Exploring swarming capabilities of unmanned vessels through simulation and potential field tests.

In summary, MULTIMETER seeks to push the boundaries of autonomy and sensing in USVs, serving as a testbed for regulation, and delivering impactful innovations for MCM operations.

The Robotics and Autonomous Systems unit from the Royal Military Academy aims to develop a modular and interoperable architecture to integrate multi-USVs long range autonomous navigation systems, a side scan sonar to augment the sensing vessel capabilities towards underwater environment and perform sensor fusion to enhance above situational awareness.
These objectives seek to ease the operations and increase the efficiency of the MCM operations.

MCMLab