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First publicly released photo of ONR’s Large Displacement UUV. The drone’s technologies will provide enhanced capabilities in endurance, energy and autonomy.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Photo Credit: Office of Naval Research<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n “The collaboration with the Navy leveraged what we learned in amassing more than 3 million miles of real-world experience,” said Charlie Freese, executive director of General Motors’ global fuel cell activities, in a news release.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s that long experience that makes GM a promising partner. “We want something reliable, we made that a major priority, so we chose General Motors because they were leveraging the commercial version of their technology,” Herr said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Researchers also are looking at ways to enhance the UUV\u2019s autonomous capabilities. In one recent award, ONR inked a $29.8 million deal with Metron under which that company will develop machine intelligence solutions to enable future UUVs to act with greater independence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “These systems need to operate near [nautical] features, in complex areas, in conjunction with other vehicles. One vehicle would have to know how to operate in the presence of another vehicle. It will need to watch itself doing business, knowing how to reroute data if there is a fault, for example,” Herr said. “If we are not going to be able to repair this in the course of a mission, it will need to repair itself and reroute itself.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n With power to go to the distance and intelligence to stay in action, the large UUV could support a range of sensors in support of diverse missions yet to be determined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “It doesn\u2019t do us any good to speculate because so much will depend on the advances in the autonomy algorithms,” Herr said. “But we know in general that a platform of this type can augment naval platform, removing sailors from missions that are very dangerous.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Presently in the prototype phase, the new large UUVs could be fielded within two years, Herr said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “It will have the autonomy to be able to find its way to do a naval mission without reporting home constantly.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":69942,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":49,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[12,49],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2220],"class_list":["post-31876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry","category-techwatch"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"QKJHTRYS6ZGR3LGOAFV43OMFTU","arc_canonical_url":"\/unmanned\/uas\/2017\/03\/29\/next-gen-underwater-drone-boosts-naval-capabilities\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n