HII demonstrates open architecture autonomy integration capability with Sea Machines' SM300

Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) acknowledged on 5 January the successful integration of its advanced autonomy solutions with Sea Machines Robotics' SM300 autonomy system.

The integration of these autonomous capabilities supports complex mission planning and collaboration between unmanned systems, the company said in a statement.

The SM300 was integrated on an HII test platform in May 2021. The integration demonstration, which took place in late 2021 in the Chesapeake Bay off the coast of Virginia Beach, Virginia, involved overlaying HII's collaborative autonomy and mission planning behaviours with the Sea Machines' SM300 system on an unmanned surface vessel (USV), the company reported.

“This represents an important milestone in our continued autonomy development,” Duane Fotheringham, the president of Technical Solutions' Unmanned Systems business group, said in a statement. “The integration was seamless and illustrates the immense potential for our open architecture autonomy to work collaboratively with other autonomous systems.”

The Sea Machines' SM300 system can be outfitted to ocean-capable vessels to enable remotely commanded USV operations or can work alongside an onboard crew to elevate the capability, precision, and endurance of a mission-driven vessel. During the demonstration, HII's autonomy managed mission delegation and enabled collaborative autonomy with other unmanned systems while providing the SM300 system information to manage the USV heading and speed.

“Sea Machines' products are developed to integrate readily with the wide range of vessel types,” Michael Johnson, the CEO of Sea Machines, said in a statement. “Our goal is to fit seamlessly into a vessel's command-and-control stack, which in some cases will include information and control systems from other autonomy systems either above or below our technology.”