Kraken gets $1.5M boost for AUV development

Canadian marine technology company Kraken Sonar announced it will receive a financial boost of up to $1,470,000 from the National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC-IRAP).

The company said the funds would be used for the development of Kraken’s underwater robotics program, which involves development of a technology demonstration platform.

The first phase of the program will use the Fraunhofer Institute’s DEDAVE Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) as the base platform. The AUV will be enhanced with hydrodynamic, control system and payload upgrades.

“We sincerely appreciate the continued support and assistance from the National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC-IRAP) to help us further penetrate the $600 million AUV market,” Karl Kenny, Kraken’s president and CEO, said. “By combining our advanced sensor technologies with cutting edge artificial intelligence algorithms, it’s our objective to deliver a cost-effective AUV solution that is truly autonomous as opposed to being simply automated.”

The DEDAVE’s current primary payload is Kraken’s 6000m depth rated AquaPix MINSAS-60 Synthetic Aperture Sonar. The MINSAS-60 will be upgraded to an AquaPix MINSAS-120 with a real-time embedded SAS processor (RTSAS), increasing the area coverage rate to 2 km2 per hour at 3cm x 3cm resolution.

According to the company, the addition of Kraken’s RTSAS and SoundView onboard geo-referencing software will enable onboard, real-time sonar data processing, image mosaicking and on-the-fly 3D seabed mapping.