British company Zero USV says that it is one step closer to offering what it describes as “the world’s first” charter fleet of fully autonomous uncrewed surface vessels after its inaugural Oceanus12 touched the water for the first time at Manor Marine in Portland, Dorset, UK, this week.
The fully equipped vessel is now ready for commissioning and integration trials from Zero USV’s home port of Plymouth. The company says that the launching of the first Oceanus12 represents the culmination of nearly 18 months of design, engineering and build effort from the team at Zero USV.
The coming weeks will see a series of key milestones achieved, Zero USV says, with vessel two due to be completed in late March and vessels three and four following that.
The company says that the Oceanus12, designed for long distance over-the-horizon operations, has also been designed to be mission agnostic, allowing a wide range of potential applications: from surveys and monitoring of critical assets to safety, geophysical surveys, border control, fisheries, defense and more.
The Oceanus12 has a hybrid-electric drive system, with twin drives for redundancy and efficiency coupled with sufficient onboard fuel for a cruising range of more than 2,500 nautical miles. Zero USV says it also uses the "only truly fully autonomous software stack on the market"—MarineAI’s Guardian software.
