Underwater assets and infrastructure have an increasingly critical role in the Department of Defense (DoD) strategies for subsea reconnaissance, surveillance, communications, and connectivity. The DoD is developing an Internet of Things (IoT) approach to subsea data collection and connectivity. As such, the department is interested in deploying large quantities of sensors, navigational aides and acoustic markers in both shallow and deep waters. While traditional ROVs can be used to deliver payloads to the seafloor in deep water, operating them is expensive and they lack the lateral range and maneuverability required to execute covert payload deployment operations. UUVs are highly capable of performing operations like this, but much payload-specific planning and custom modifications are typically required if the payload is to be stored within the vehicle hull. A high demand exists for a flexible, externally-mounted UUV payload delivery system that can be used to deploy a variety of payloads from a range of vehicles without the need to modify the UUV in any way. Makai Ocean Engineering proposes to develop the External Payload Release System (ExPRS). The ExPRS provides a low cost, reusable, modular method for rapidly and accurately delivering subsea payloads from a variety of UUV types in both shallow and deep water environments.
Benefit: Due to the wide range of potential federal and commercial applications for ExPRS our team will engage with the Navy early in the project to socialize the capability and its benefits, gain stakeholder buy-in, and establish timelines for testing and ultimately the transition to operational systems. In coordination with the Navy, we will select a single target application and mission set to demonstrate the technology, and then use those results to motivate and accelerate transition across the Navy and commercial sectors for multiple applications. The DoDs UUV fleet, where the ExPRS system is expected to be applicable, is estimated to be 171 units, that includes 72 small UUVs (SUUVs), 42 medium UUVs (MUUVs), and 57 large displacement UUVs (LDUUVs). Makai expects the ExPRS system to be implemented on approximately 50% of these platforms, for a total DoD market size of 86 units. The DoDs UUV fleet is currently expected to grow at a rate of 8 SUUVs, 10 MUUVs, and 2 LDUUVs per year, which will allow for a steady growth of the ExPRS system. Makai expects to be able to sell 100s of these units to be equipped to the 86 applicable DoD platforms. The offshore oil and gas (O&G) industry is expected to be the greatest commercial market for the ExPRS. The oil and gas industry has a need to deploy fields of sensors on the seafloor for ocean-bottom seismic (OBS) sensing. These sensor fields typically consist of 100s of sensors placed in a grid pattern on the seafloor. Deployment of these sensors currently relies on individual placement by working class remote operated vehicles (ROVs). This method is time consuming and costly. Due to the high procurement and operation costs of ROVs, these deployment operations typically only use one ROV at a time. Makais ExPRS will allow the O&G industry to deploy a multitude of sensors on the seafloor, using a fleet of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs), to reduces costs and deployment time for the O&G industry. Makai believes that a conservative estimate of the commercial O&G market size is at least 500 units.
Keywords: Payload Delivery, Payload Delivery, UUV, navigational aids, Acoustic Markers
