Hybrid Unmanned Air / Underwater Vehicle for Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) and Mine Countermeasures (MCM)

A particularly challenging task for the US Navy today is that of Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) of underwater mines; the Mine Countermeasures (MCM) mission. The semi-submersible Remote Multi-Mission Vehicle (RMMV) has emerged as an unmanned solution to handle MCM missions. While the RMMV is groundbreaking, the basis of the technology is a relatively slow-moving watercraft.GreenSight Agronomics, teamed with the University of Maryland (UMD), is pleased to present a pathway to develop a Hybrid Unmanned Air/Underwater Vehicle (HUA/UV) system that meets the goal of the solicitation. The proposed HUA/UV will be capable of quickly traveling in the air from a long standoff distance to an Area of Operations, transition into the water to conduct evaluation and neutralization of underwater mines and finally transition back into the air and return to base. To accomplish this goal, GreenSight will leverage the partnership with UMD to characterize the fundamental physics of the propulsion system traversing the air/water boundary and utilize that information to develop optimized flight stabilization algorithms which will allow the HUA/UV to easily traverse the air/water interface. Additionally, the team will work with the ONR sponsor to define the most appropriate payload suite to accomplish the underwater EOD and MCM mission