2023_programme: Unmanned Acoustic Sensing Platform with Enhanced Capabilities

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  • Session: 17. Unmanned vehicles for underwater acoustic surveillance and monitoring
    Organiser(s): Alain Maguer
  • Lecture: Unmanned Acoustic Sensing Platform with Enhanced Capabilities [invited]
    Paper ID: 1932
    Author(s): Mahar Scott, D'Spain Gerald
    Presenter: Mahar Scott
    Abstract: Unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV) are efficient task multipliers, able to perform dull, dirty, and dangerous jobs while freeing manned platforms to perform more complex work. As technologies and sensors mature, onboard energy and vehicle endurance continue to increase. Additionally, support of acoustic sensors requires the vehicle to exhibit a very low acoustic signature. The integration of higher energy density systems into UUVs with outer shapes optimized for low energy consumption and more efficient UUV propulsion is generating a new class of gliders with advanced capabilities.\nThis paper identifies various approaches to increasing the “persistence” (long distance and long duration) of next generation UUVs while expanding on the capability of this glider to support acoustic sensors. Optimization of the lift-to-drag ratio, using modern computational fluid dynamical modeling methods, increases propulsion efficiency. Increasing the size of the vehicle also leads to increased performance due to the drag scaling with the square of the wingspan while the persistence scales with the cube of the wingspan. The larger vehicle size not only increases persistence, but also enables novel hull-mounted and towed hydrophone configurations capable of highly spatially resolved acoustic measurements in multiple dimensions simultaneously. General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems has been developing novel power and energy systems for decades in support of vehicles with unique mission requirements. These advanced power and energy systems include fault tolerant lithium-ion batteries, aluminum powered fuel cell systems, and nuclear energy sources.\nThe combination of an advanced power and energy system with a scaled-up blended wing glider has led to a vehicle with unprecedented persistence and a platform ideal for subsea acoustic sensing. Plans for at sea testing of a glider in 2023 will be presented with focus on improving future capabilities for autonomous acoustic sensing.
      Download the full paper
  • Corresponding author: Dr Scott Mahar
    Affiliation: General Atomics
    Country: United States
    e-mail:

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