The ASEMAR Project

Aware of the new trends in Surveillance Operations, THALES Underwater Systems has been developing AUV based sonar systems since the late 1990’s. At present, THALES and ECA are developing an AUV system, within the frame of the French Poles of Competitiveness (Pôle Mer Bretagne). This project is called ASEMAR, for “Auv de SEcurité MARitime”. In this development, THALES and ECA work together in a strong partnership, THALES being the System Design Authority and ECA being the expert in vehicle design. The objective is clearly to develop, experiment and industrialize an autonomous AUV based Surveillance System. The main components of the AUV are the embedded intelligence, the sonar payload, the navigation function and the vehicle. The AUV may communicate with the surface ship through an acoustic link; sonar and navigation data are recorded on board the AUV. To secure its main capabilities, the AUV takes benefit of efficient functions and sub-systems. For instance, THALES is developing a challenging on board processing that will perform automatic target recognition and determine adaptive behaviour as part of the mission management. The system is open and modular, which means that, as future growth potentials, it may include more efficient or additional functions or equipments. Academic partners are also involved in the project, to investigate new innovative functions to be integrated in the system. The presentation will give details about the functions and performance of the AUV and will give some results from sea trials.