Saildrone, Inc. and RPS Tetra Tech
Saildrone and RPS Tetra Tech have designed and executed a multi-phased National Offshore Wind Research and Development Consortium (NOWRDC) project that combines advanced uncrewed surface vehicle (USV) technology with proprietary marine mammal detection artificial intelligence to create a unique near real-time acoustic monitoring platform that can be used to detect, classify, and localize marine mammals remotely.
This USV-based monitoring system can conduct long-endurance, coordinated, and widespread passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) where Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM) Operators monitor with the support of AI to detect and mitigate, as needed, to support a wide variety of offshore wind farm operations, including foundation installation and monitoring of vessel transit corridors, or collection of baseline data during wind farm operation.
Each technology offers significant advantages over many of the available solutions in employment at this time. As a monitoring platform, USVs are a flexible, operationally independent, and adaptable data collection method compared to static buoy systems, requiring regular and frequent intervention and support from crewed vessels.
