I won't reinvent the wheel. Go to Gizmag to read their article on this waterborne UV. My question is basically this. What purpose will surface UVs fill? Just like the search for ground unmanned vehicles I just don't see these taking off. I could easily be wrong but I just don't see the niche that they're gonna fill. I mean seriously...the Army's been looking at these for over a decade and they're relegated to backpack sized robots. The Navy's been searching too and haven't hit on anything.
But again, I could be wrong. Here's the link to the company website for more info.
Semi-autonomous UGVs are several orders of magnitude more complex than a semi-autonomous USV or UAV. Navigating on the ground is far more complex than navigating at sea. There's a lot less to run into out there.
ReplyDeleteUSVs have a ton of potential for traditional unmanned "dirty, dull and dangerous" missions like searching an area for mines or SSKs with sonar, or keeping a tail on a suspected pirate vessel.
If it could tow a side-scanning or low frequency active sonar for up to 40 days, it could cover a large minefield, or a lot of SSK operating area.
Of course the Zyvex boat sounds almost too good to be true.