Liquid Robotics and Boeing SHARCs® have swarmed the Scottish coast for the last few weeks as part of an unprecedented global unmanned systems demonstration.
The SHARCs (Sensor Hosting Autonomous Remote Craft) are participating in the U.K. Royal Navy’s Unmanned Warrior event—the largest demonstration of its kind showcasing unmanned system technologies including air, surface and sub-surface vehicles and sensors. The SHARCs were part of a suite of systems demonstrated by Boeing, including its ScanEagle unmanned aerial system (UAS) with subsidiary Insitu, as well as the CAMCOPTER S-100 UAS with partner Schiebel.
During the demonstration, the SHARCs -- equipped with acoustic towed arrays and onboard processing -- proved the power of persistent maritime surveillance by autonomously detecting, reporting and tracking a live submarine.
“At Unmanned Warrior we showed how autonomous systems and networks can address the world’s most pressing maritime challenges in smarter, safer and more efficient ways,” said Kory Mathews, Boeing Defense, Space & Security’s vice president for Autonomous Systems.
Unmanned Warrior is overlaid onto the twice-yearly multinational Joint Warrior exercise staged off western Scotland, allowing the Royal Navy to see first-hand how some of the systems and sensors could integrate into current and future operations.
During the initial phase of Unmanned Warrior, SHARCs went into the North Atlantic and completed a successful 13-day mission collecting weather and oceanographic data for the U.K. National Oceanographic Centre (NOC). On that mission, SHARCs operated in a sea state 7 and faced sustained waves of up to 6.6 meters while delivering over 8,000 weather and ocean reports for NOC.
Check out the video below to see a quick recap of the mission.
