News: First Operation Takes Place From ASV Global Mission Control

Last week ASV Global welcomed Mark Garnier MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, to open their state of the art Mission Control Centre at our base in Portchester, UK.

This new centre will be the hub for the ongoing development of their market leading ASView® autonomous vessel control system. Not only will the centre be capable of operating and monitoring their fleet of ‘ASVs’ all over the world using satellite communication links but will also be used for operator training and simulation exercises.

The occasion saw the very first operation take place from their newly opened facility. Demonstrating their operational capability they controlled one of their ASVs in the Solent over a 4G network as it operated in a supervised unmanned mode, a mode representative of current and future commercial operations. The boat autonomously ran a pre-defined mission while being supervised by remote operator Rob Clark from Mission Control.

The array of sensors fitted on the ASV, among which were the newly developed ‘Camera Box’ ensured Rob had sufficient situational awareness by providing him with an uninterrupted 360° optical lookout in both the visible and IR spectrum. Safe navigation and, in particular, man-in-the loop collision avoidance was ensured.

They demonstrated their simulation capability by running their Advanced USV simulator. In September 2016, they signed a licencing agreement with The Ministry of Defence allowing for the use of the Advanced Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) Capability technology developed using funding via Dstl. Using the funding they were able to demonstrate advanced autonomous navigation at the Royal Navy’s Unmanned Warrior exercise in October 2016 and more recently in the Solent. This technology has now been integrated with the Innovate UK project developments within Mission Control.

The Mission Control Centre has been partly funded under Innovate UK funding awarded to the company in 2015 under a project called ‘Unmanned Safe Maritime Operations Over The Horizon’ which tasked their team of autonomous system engineers to research and develop both the technology and the regulatory requirements of operating autonomous vessels over the horizon.