Autonomous Vessel Demonstrated Exceptional Capabilities

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An experimental unmanned craft fitted out with advanced autonomous navigation tested recently performed a series of reconnaissance, interdiction, and patrol missions. The 9 m Maritime Autonomy Surface Testbed craft, known as MAST-9, was developed and built by the autonomous maritime systems house L3 ASV.

The system was tested in support of the UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl). The craft used radar to provide situational awareness, making it possible to detect and avoid other vessels accordingly. The vessel operated in fully autonomous mode, including COLREG-aware collision avoidance, navigating the waterways at speeds of up to 40 kt for over 80 hours, according to janes.com. This aggregated to a distance of 1,380 km covered.
The company said the MAST-9 system completed about 100 tasks commanded from the Maritime Autonomous Platform Exploitation (MAPLE) command-and-control system. MAPLE is a Dstl project designed to demonstrate and de-risk the integration of multiple unmanned systems into future UK Royal Navy combat systems.
The company’s proprietary autonomous control system communicated the operational status and payload feedback to and from MAPLE. “Using an optical and infrared camera, MAST-9 demonstrated high-speed inspection capability. The ASView control system allowed the remote mission commanders to track and follow target vessels for interdiction tasks,” the company said.
“The reliability and consistency of the system was solid proof of the use case for autonomous surface platforms for persistent inspection and tracking at range, particularly in challenging environmental conditions,” said Dr. Howard Tripp, Autonomous Systems Research and Development Lead, L3 ASV. “There were instances where the weather dictated that manned vessels had to return to harbor – the autonomous vessel, by its nature, was not subject to these concerns and was able to operate normally. This is where the real value in autonomy lies,” he continued, according to asvglobal.com.