Government
Autonomous Undersea Vehicle Applications Center (AUVAC)
Background
Ocean exploration has become a national priority. The US Commission on Ocean Policy,
in
“An Ocean Blueprint for the 21st Century”
(18.4MB PDF) from September 2004 states, “An overarching
message from the Inventory of US Coastal and Ocean Facilities is the need for continued
partnerships among public and private entities to reduce costs, leverage resources,
and encourage information sharing.”
The Chief of Naval Operations (CNO)’s “CNO Guidance for 2004”
recommended accelerating “prototyping and experimentation of autonomous and
semi-autonomous naval unmanned vehicles.” “CNO Guidance for 2005”
requested a “[s]urvey and report on unmanned platforms that exist in other
services or branches of the US government, or that are in near-term development
(able to be deployed in experiments), and that provide potential capabilities to
improve counter-terrorism and AT/FP effectiveness.” To meet these national
objectives and to meet the needs for ocean science, military, and homeland defense,
Autonomous Unmanned Vehicle (AUV) systems collaboration among
organizations is required.
Issue
Several studies have identified the need for the establishment of a national center
for sharing AUV assets (platforms and sensing systems), information, technological
advancements, and insight. Such a center would provide a structure whereby potential
users might obtain access to existing AUV systems, technologies, and operational
/ development support. The available AUV systems would be “known quantities”
in that they would have been qualified to meet a certain level of capability and
would adhere to a certain level of interoperability with other systems.
GP Strategies believes that commercial development facilities such as the proposed
AUVAC will be instrumental in providing services to military and commercial developers
of AUVs. GP Strategies is pursuing involvement in such centers to provide remote
maintenance to the vehicles through the implementation of the Virtual Maintenance Engineering Platform concept as well as
the development of portable test ranges using devices such as the Autonomous Undersea Platform.
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