Automated Anchor Handling System

Martin Defense Group will develop a completely autonomous anchoring system, hardware and software, to enable the operations of both the Medium and Large Unmanned Surface Vehicle (MUSV, LUSV). To achieve a completely autonomous operation, our system combines a simplified mechanical anchor, sensors, and on-vessel software.  The autonomous decision making proposed will include pre-anchoring knowledge checks, to reduce uncertainty and monitoring of anchoring process to identify divergences from expected conditions.  All system components are scalable from equipment number U7 to U15 and can be implemented with multiple anchor styles and hawse pipe layouts. A chain stopper/cutter, situated between the windlass and hawse pipe, locks the chain in place after setting anchor and while underway.  Finally, the software stack will continually monitor the post-anchoring status to assure station keeping performance is met and if needed reset the anchor.