Development of an Autonomous Surface System for Permanent and Persistent Monitoring of Vehicles in the Water Column

The developments associated with Industry 4.0 allowed us to reduce the cost and increase the technology capacity even in small work teams. The Portuguese Navy, as a branch of the Armed Forces (FFAA) is monitoring this progress, continuing to make resources available for research and development of technology that makes it possible to carry out their missions quickly, effectively, and safely. To accelerate this process, the Navy is developing some of these systems in-house, and students from the Portuguese Naval Academy are helping in this development. This paper describes the process of designing and building an autonomous surface platform for monitoring the water column. First, a literature review was carried out on the existence products in the market and some examples for the new autonomous vessels. Requirements were mapped to create a product strategy and know which are the operational employments and project limitations. A new vessel was designed, incorporating lessons learned and recent developments. This designed was modelled in software that performed static analysis of the full structure, and hydrodynamic analysis was performed using various tools. The command and control (C2) system as well as the power generations and distribution of energy on board the platform is also addressed. The system is described in further detail in an MSc Thesis from the Portuguese Naval Academy.