Issue 45 | Uncrewed Systems Technology Aug/Sept 2022 Tidewie USV Tupan | Performance monitoring | Bayonet 350 | UAVs insight | Xponential 2022 | ULPower UL350i and UL350iHPS | Elroy Air Chaparral | Gimbals | Clogworks Dark Matter

50 Digest | Bayonet 350 “Our vehicle can go out, perform a data-sampling mission of equivalent scale to multiple buoys, then drive itself back up the beach to its operator without the operator needing to lift a finger to retrieve it. Properly designed UGVs will sit in more energetic natural environments, maintaining an accurate position for extended periods of time and without consuming battery life to maintain that position.” System architecture Nick Hartman, Bayonet’s VP for strategy and growth, says, “AUVs and ROVs cover deeper waters with lighter currents, typically for the navy, while the army tends to cover waters that are further inland where the shore starts. Even the army’s ground vehicles aren’t really made for travelling into the surf zone. “So we’ve designed the crawler platform to operate in rough sea states and amid breaking waves, where AUVs and divers can’t, and we can carry different payloads to monitor whatever data the customer’s area of interest is.” The Bayonets are made largely from hard, anodised aluminium structural components. Inside those are typically two battery packs, which send energy to the two motor controllers. These in turn power and control two electric motors with gearboxes for driving the caterpillar tracks. The track assemblies are referred to in-house as the ‘pontoons’, and are integrated modules each containing one pack, motor controller, e-motor and gearbox, as well as two track wheels. Further up and around the mechanical frame joining the two pontoons is an electronics enclosure containing the computer systems for autonomous navigation and payload operation. The track assemblies plug into this box to receive instructions for traction, speed and differential steering, with a proprietary single-board computer acting as the ‘brain’ of the AUGV and as the arbiter between the various subsystem- level computers such as the battery management systems, motor controllers and payload computers. It is also in here that data comms user interface (UI) feedback including information from mission payloads – with up to 195 kg of sensors storable around the remaining volume and atop the deck – are processed before being delivered to the operator, who will typically be seated at their laptop or holding Greensea’s RNAV2 handheld tablet-and-joystick solution. In either case, Greensea’s UI software platform for command, control and data monitoring will be running for visualising the mission planning and its progress. “The UI gives you feedback on where you’re going, including camera information if one is installed and the data link permits it, or sonar information,” Farinella says. “Control is achieved either through joystick or autonomous waypoint navigation; the autonomy can be interrupted from the joystick to investigate an object of interest, and after investigating it the autonomy can be continued from the last waypoint.” Payload arrangements On payload capacity, Hartman says, “We’re flexible with the amount of space we have and how we use it. We want these AUGVs to be the pick-up trucks of amphibious mobile robots – a simple tool that doesn’t take much training to use, and will carry whatever is needed, where it’s needed.” Farinella adds, “We can customise the deck space between the pontoons to make it as wide or as narrow as an end- user needs. We design the 350 as a wide vehicle to begin with, to fit the broadest sensor packages possible, and by virtue of experience and common sense we can position each sensor wherever it needs to be to work.” The OpenSea software platform adds a number of key architectural benefits to the UGV itself as well. First, it enables the Bayonets to be largely sensor-agnostic: the electronics network and connectivity arrangement are such that different end- users can plug in different sensors from a multitude of OEMs, and gather and retrieve their data through the UGV and its UI mission software. “Because of the numerous systems that Greensea have worked on to integrate and interface with over the decades, we have a large catalogue of OEM and COTS equipment that we can install – not just sonars, cameras, environmental sensors and other mission payloads, but also acoustic comms equipment, illuminators,” Hartman notes. “And their modules have been proven out over the years on all sorts of UUVs, so we can use them with great confidence in our AUGV.” August/September 2022 | Uncrewed Systems Technology The Greensea Systems user interface feeds mission and survey data from the Bayonet 350