Asemar Thales AUV Autonomous Underwater unmanned vehicle technical data sheet specifications information description pictures photos images video intelligence identification Thales France French navy maritime naval defence industry technology

The ASEMAR autonomous unmanned vehicle for maritime surveillance and security is a project funded by the General Directorate for Enterprises (DGE) in France and involves several partners. The two main companies are Thales and ECA ROBOTICS and four educational institutions, ENSIETA, Ecole Navale, AMURE and ISEN. Thales is responsible for the overall project coordination, the high resolution sonar sensor and associated on-board intelligence processing, as well as the system deployment. ECA ROBOTICS is in charge of the design of the autonomous underwater vehicle itself and all aspects linked directly to the navigation, autonomous behavior and communications. This innovative AUV (Autnomous Underwater Vehicle) will feature high levels of decision-making autonomy, generation of high-resolution underwater imagery from depth and compatibility with standard off-the-shelf equipment. The system will also have the capability to track changes in the undersea environment between subsequent missions and compare the objects it detects with those stored in its database. Sea trials have been conducted from beginning of 2010 until end of April 2010, at first in the South of France, near Toulon, to validate the behavior of the vehicle and its components in various conditions, and then in the West of France, near Brest, to validate the sonar performance when integrated in the vehicle and the global system performances. During these sea trials, the AUV has demonstrated its capacity to perform large missions in full autonomy. The advanced technologies developed in this ASEMAR project have allowed to perform at sea the demonstration of an autonomous underwater vehicle able to perform surveillance missions over large areas, with a high level of performance thanks to its high level of autonomy.