ThayerMahan Partners with UNH for Coastal, Ocean Mapping Projects
February 10, 2022
ThayerMahan, which develops autonomous maritime systems, has announced a collaborative partnership with the Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping / Joint Hydrographic Center (CCOM/JHC) at the University of New Hampshire (UNH). The partnership will help advance the sonar-based SeaScout system, for high-speed and high-resolution surveys of coastal and oceans.
The CCOM/JHC is a formal cooperative partnership between UNH and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), founded in 1999 with the objectives of developing tools to advance ocean mapping and hydrography, and to train the next generation of hydrographers and ocean mappers. CCOM, a complementary university center in the UNH School of Marine Science and Ocean Engineering, expands the scope of ocean mapping with the private sector, other government agencies and other universities.
The new partnership developed after the two groups worked together at sea, in which they deployed a SeaScout system on the NOAA ship Okeanos Explorer. During the expedition, synthetic aperture sonar (SAS) data was collected over a series of underwater cultural heritage locations off the U.S. Northeast and Mid-Atlantic coasts. ThayerMahan provided local command and control of the SeaScout system, and also demonstrated remote command and control from its Groton, Conn., operations center. The system was able to capture a high-resolution image of an offshore shipwreck off the coast of Virginia/North Carolina.
The SeaScout utilizes SAS and multibeam echosounder sensors simultaneously to collect range-independent data from a large swath of seafloor. The company said near real-time visualization of ultra-fine resolution (3cm by 3cm) beamformed imagery and interferometric bathymetry allow immediate quality assurance and quality control. Artificial intelligence data fusion and seafloor characterization also enable SeaScout to be a top tool for ocean mapping and hydrography, the company said.
“CCOM is very excited about this new partnership,” said Larry Mayer, director of CCOM and co-director of JHC. “We have long focused on exploring new and innovative approaches to hydrography and ocean mapping. Bringing the extraordinary capabilities of SAS into this domain is an important step forward and we look forward to a productive collaboration with ThayerMahan.”
For more details on ThayerMahan’s technology, visit its website here.
