Autonomous Surface Vehicles Ltd (ASV) have entered into a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) with the National Oceanography Centre (NOC). This is the first partnership of its kind for both organisations, and will offer ASV the reliability statements and evidence based testing they need to give their marine autonomous systems a significant market advantage.
The KTP will embed innovative risk and reliability management capability into ASV, by transferring knowledge from the NOC’s Marine Autonomous & Robotics Systems (MARS) group. This capability will complement ASV’s ongoing commitment to improving the reliability of autonomous systems, as well as enabling them to lead the way in the industry and define reliability standards for marine autonomous vehicles.
Richard Daltry, technical director from ASV, said: “Risk management and system reliability are absolutely key to the successful operation of autonomous surface vehicles, it underpins both the safety and probability of mission success. One of ASV’s core business objectives is to achieve market leading reliability in its product and service offering to the defence, science and offshore energy industries. We are therefore very pleased to be able to gain the NOC’s expertise and extensive experience in this area through this KTP.”
The NOC have been developing and operating autonomous vehicles for use in some of the most hostile and challenging marine environments on earth for two decades. This experience and knowledge around risk and reliability analysis for autonomous vehicle missions makes NOC the perfect partner for ASV, and will lead to a Risk and Reliability department being formed.