Canadian marine technology developer Kraken Robotics will receive C$749,746 (€513,109.02) in maritime innovation funding from the National Research Council of Canada.
The maritime innovation funding is to be delivered through the Research Council’s Industrial Research Assistance programme, Canada’s leading funding assistance programme for innovation in small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs); and will go towards supporting research and development of Kraken’s autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) project, ThunderFish® XL. The robotic vehicle is a further development of Kraken’s previous autonomous underwater project, ThunderFish® Alpha, a mid-sized AUV which has been adopted by Defence Research and Development Canada. ThunderFish® XL is set to include innovative and dynamic technologies not installed on the Alpha vehicle, including Kraken’s Multispectral AquaPix® Synthetic Aperture Sonar, SeaVision® RGB laser scanner and SeaThrust® rim-driven thrusters, which will enable the XL to hover.
The ThunderFish research and development programme is part of OceanVision™, a three-year, C$20m (€13.68m) scheme aimed at developing and creating innovative new marine technology in order to accelerate the growth of underwater data gathering and analytics as a service business. Through the OceanVision™ programme, Kraken hopes to accelerate its evolution into an integrated provider of both Data as a Service (DaaS) and Robotics as a Service (RaaS).
In a statement, Kraken Robotics said: ‘Kraken’s ThunderFish® AUV is an innovative marine robot designed for ultra-high resolution seabed imaging and mapping applications. It can be used for a wide range of oceanographic and military tasks including underwater surveys, environmental monitoring, habitat mapping, marine archaeology, inspection of submerged structures, searching for downed aircraft and naval mine countermeasures. ThunderFish® carries an array of sensors and custom payload modules, including Kraken’s AquaPix® Synthetic Aperture Sonar. The platform is ideal for monitoring or surveillance tasks where cost efficiency, ease of deployment and operational simplicity matters. Its modular design allows for rapid sensor reconfiguration and battery replacement.’
