Phase II year
2023
(last award dollars: 1724426150)
High performance underwater operation with low probability of detection in challenging areas can provide significant value across many naval missions. There is an ongoing desire for greater range, endurance, and speed for unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs). Bio-informed UUV designs offer potential improvements, particularly in swimming speed. Boston Engineering is proud to offer bio-robotics convergent evolution: a solution based on the combined technology and expertise of our world class team. Our team includes leaders in bioinspired robotics: Dr. Hilary Bart-Smith, her team at the University of Virginia, Dr. George Lauder of Harvard University, and Boston Engineering, producers of GhostSwimmer, the Navys highly successful autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) that replicates the dynamics of fish to move rapidly and accurately in areas inaccessible to other vehicles. This proposal leverages the existing proven technology of Boston Engineering with the latest ground-breaking bio-informed robotic system development and analyses of our team. This combination provides major advances in UUV speed-at-low-cost of transport that is beyond state of the art and focuses on the specific challenges of this development. Our unique approach advances to well-beyond-SOTA more rapidly, provides greater probability of success in all Phases, and focuses on the right risks, while reducing the others.
