SBIR-STTR Award

Prof. Diezs group at Rutgers University has developed a small platform for an unmanned aerial and submersible system that it is capable of operating in air and underwater with seamless transition between both mediums. This small platform is currently being optimized by his group for improved (1) control and (2) robustness, and it will be incorporating capabilities to it include (3) communication and (4) navigation under a previous ONR grant with Rutgers. A small vehicle prototype is being developed to demonstrate those four areas. In order to address the mission requirements in N16A-T025, we are proposing to perform a detailed feasibility study that will evaluate if the above platform can be scale up to the mission requirement of carrying a payload of 10-30 pounds. SubUAS LLC was started with the intent to commercialize this disruptive and promising technology.

Benefit:
Current technology has extremely limited payload capacity. A hybrid system with the ability to carry 10-30 pounds would open up a new market for explosive ordinance disposal, underwater ship hull inspections, seamless underwater pier to above-surface bridge inspections, waterway obstruction monitoring and novel mine countermeasure techniques.

Keywords:
Explosive Ordinance Disposal, Explosive Ordinance Disposal, Naviator, mine countermeasures, Hybrid Unmanned Air and Underwater Vehicle, Seamless Air to Water transition

Team SubUAS, the STTR partnership between SubUAS LLC and Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, have developed the first drone to operate seamlessly between air, surface and water mediums. On this proposed effort, our multirotor unmanned aerial/underwater vehicle (MUA/UV) will be scaled to carry a payload of 10-30 pounds. Team SubUAS will build, test and develop simulated concept of operations pertinent to the Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) and Mine Countermeasure (MCM) communities. Team SubUAS will investigate HUA/UVs operating under tethered control, hybrid Radio Frequency (RF) tethered operations and fully autonomous operations. At the end of Phase II, Team SubUAS will perform the following sequence take off, land in water and image an underwater target at depths of 5-40ft in the water column, and resume flight in air. We will repeat this sequence up to 10 times before returning to the initial site of launch. During the Option period, Team SubUAS will continue to refine our MUA/UV through testing and lessons learned in varied, real-world environments and increase operational safety using data-driven decisions.

Benefit:
Our

Keywords:
mine countermeasures, Hybrid UAS/UUV, Naviator, air/water vehicle, Explosive Ordinance Disposal