ARLINGTON, Va., 15 Dec. 2016. Unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) experts at Metron Inc. in Reston, Va., are moving forward with efforts to develop machine intelligence for future generations of U.S. Navy UUVs for a wide variety of applications like long-range surveillance.
Officials of the Office of Naval Research (ONR) in Arlington, Va., announced a $29.8 million contract to Metron on Wednesday for an effort titled advanced autonomy for unmanned undersea vehicles.
This research project seeks to write and test software for advanced UUV autonomy that runs on government-provided hardware. The goal is to demonstrate emerging machine autonomy capabilities in several different kinds of military missions.
This is far from Metron”s first technology development effort in unmanned autonomy. The company is involved in developing autonomy software for the ONR Large Displacement Unmanned Undersea Vehicle (LDUUV) project, which includes autonomy for the LDUUV involves autonomy software, computer hardware, and sensors.
In 2013 Metron won a $7.3 million ONR contract for in-lab integration and testing of autonomy and mission planning software with bench test hardware selected for deployment on the LDUUV.