SEA-KIT Wins ECO’s Ocean Influencers of 2019!
Here at SEA-KIT we are delighted to announce we have not only, made it into ECO’s Top Ten Ocean Influencers of 2019! but have won in the Innovation category!
It is a great honour to have been awarded this title by such a well-respected publication, and to be featured under the innovation section is something we have been aiming towards since our start. Innovation is truly at our core, alongside working for healthier oceans all across the globe.
We would not have been able to gain such recognition without the help of many. We hope that this is just the beginning of getting the SEA-KIT name out there. Widespread recognition is needed for SEA-KIT in order to continue innovation, and to not only catch the eyes of those who will use SEA-KIT but for those who will enable us to spread awareness of the great things the unmanned vessel can achieve.
Read the Environment Coastal and Offshore article here.
We hope to be sharing more great news soon.
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Technology Showcase
A great day out at the Technology Showcase as part of London International Shipping Week – previewing SEA-KIT USV as part of the best of British maritime technology and innovation on board the Royal Navy’s RFA Lyme Bay.
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SEA-KIT International Completes Unmanned Pipeline Inspection
Another feature for SEA-KIT! Follow the link to discover more.
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The Robot Ship Set to Cross the Atlantic and Change the World
“The blocky, 36-foot-long, yellow- and white-striped vessel bobbing off the coast of the United Kingdom sure doesn’t look like much. But Maxlimer just might be the most important ship in the world right now.”
SEA-KIT features in the Daily Beast, follow the link on the image to read even more about the journey so far.
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Swire Seabed Wraps Up Equinor Unmanned Pipeline Inspection
It was a great experience working with Swire Seabed to achieve this world first. SEA-KIT’s operations team managed to successfully deploy, retrieve, and transmit control and position data to the HUGIN AUV from our 12m USV.
“The campaign, undertaken in July 2019, is the first fully unmanned offshore pipeline inspection ‘over the horizon’ ever completed, surveying up to 100 kilometers from the shore.”
Follow the link below to find out more!
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“Competition Drives Innovation and Inspiration”
The XPRIZE competition allowed SEA-KIT International to increase awareness, drive motivation and take the next steps that ocean technology so desperately needed for the future of our planet. The completion of the competition meant that SEA-KIT now have to utilise the opportunities XPRIZE have created.
Our time of reflection was short, we dived back into research and testing to ensure we start creating a real impact. Our future plans will all be revealed soon, but until then it’s good to focus on what the other teams achieved and how robotics in the maritime industry can change the world for the best.
The Robot Report released an article that goes into details of all the teams, the competition and the future. An article that helps explain why it all matters.
Innovation is key!
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National Geographic Feature
SEA-KIT is featured in an article written for the National Geographic. We are honoured to be featured in something so educational and ground breaking. We will continue gaining coverage to ensure the deep importance of SEA-KIT in understood by all.
Please have a read of the article (linked below) and share as much as possible to spread the word!
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“The Oceans Are Earth’s Least Explored Space”
Get to know a bit more about the science behind our mission, the research and our future plans. The article below, written by Hilary Brueck, gives an insight into why the XPRIZE competition is so important to future developments in scientific discoveries & technological and medical advances.
“The oceans are Earth’s least explored space.
Blanketing more than two-thirds of the planet, the seas hide clues about questions like “when is the next tsunami?,” “where did that plane crash?,” and even “how high will sea levels rise?”
Today, XPRIZE — the non-profit started by Peter Diamandis that awards multi-million dollar prizes to spur new inventions — awarded $4 million to a team that built a pair of robots to help solve some of those mysteries.
The autonomous vehicles are designed to explore the deepest corners of the sea floor, places fewer than a handful of humans have ever visited. The robots work together to map the bottom of the ocean: One vehicle, named “Hugin,” moves below the waves, while the other, “SeaKIT,” stays on the surface.
“Our vision for the ocean is a healthy, valued and understood ocean,” Jyotika Virmani, XPRIZE’s executive director of prize operations, told Business Insider. “A map is the most basic level of understanding that we can get to … and we just don’t have that map yet.”
The winning team wants to map the entire sea floor by 2030
The winning team behind the robots is called GEBCO-NF Alumni, and it is spearheaded by a duo of researchers based in New Hampshire and Russia.
“We were 78 people from 22 countries that worked on the project,” project director Rochelle Wigley said when the prize winners were announced in Monaco on Friday. “Our diversity wasn’t only in nationalities, it was in education, careers, backgrounds, gender, color, age. We were truly diverse.”
During the final phase of the XPRIZE competition in Greece, their pair of vehicles successfully mapped an area of the sea 250 square kilometers wide and 4,000 meters below the surface in 24 hours. That’s an area more than twice the size of Paris.
Creating a good map of the sea floor would help scientists better predict tsunamis, estimate sea-level rise, and assist rescue crews as they hunt for downed planes and ships.
The team’s winning device is relatively low-cost. The two vessels use satellites and broadband radio to communicate, and they employ sonar to map the sea floor. No humans are required to step foot in the water for the system to work. When the Hugin submarine is ready to return home, it simply parks itself inside the bigger SeaKIT ship.
GEBCO-NF Alumni wants to map the entire sea floor by 2030 using the pair of robotic ocean explorers. It’s an ambitious plan, considering that less than 10% of the world’s oceans have been mapped to date.
To work more quickly, the team uses cloud-based data processing that speeds up the mapping process. That way, instead of waiting two to three weeks for a map to render, the process can be done in days, at a detail level of 5-meter resolution.
“If you put a DNA sensor on the technology, you could actually even sniff out and figure out the distribution of invasive species,” Virmani said”
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Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE Winners!
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SEA-KIT docks in Belgium to complete first ever international commercial uncrewed transit
London UK, 9 May 2019 – London UK, 9 May 2019 – SEA-KIT International, the 12m-long uncrewed surface vessel (USV) designed and built in Essex, docked in the Belgian port city of Oostende earlier this week following a successful transit from West Mersea, UK.SEA-KIT, the 12m-long uncrewed surface vessel (USV) designed and built in Essex, docked in the Belgian port city of Oostende earlier this week following a successful transit from West Mersea, UK. The voyage, which lasted 22 hours, represents the first commercial crossing of the North Sea by an autonomous vessel, and marks a significant breakthrough in uncrewed ocean transit.
SEA-KIT USV arrived at Oostende at 09:00 CEST on Tuesday 7 May, where it was welcomed by Belgian customs officers, who took delivery of a box of oysters caught around Mersea Island that SEA-KIT had delivered from its West Mersea point of departure. The box weighed around 5 kg – just a fraction of the current model’s maximum payload of up to 2.5 tonnes.
The SEA-KIT vessel USV Maxlimer is operated by SEA-KIT International Ltd, and is designed and developed by Hushcraft Ltd, based in Tollesbury, Essex. SEA-KIT’s unique modular design means that it can be easily and cost effectively configured to a wide range of maritime tasks for various sectors. The vessel can be transported in a single 40ft container drastically reducing the mobilisation costs, whilst being truly uncrewed means SEA-KIT can conduct its missions without placing any human personnel in harm’s way and at significantly reduced rate.
The mission was designed to showcase SEA-KIT’s uncrewed navigation capabilities through GPS and satellite communication, including marine traffic avoidance in what is one of the world’s busiest shipping routes.
With the successful completion of the UK to Belgium mission, SEA-KIT’s voyage demonstrates an effective model for international communication and cooperation in the field of uncrewed shipping. The Global Situational Awareness via Internet (G-SAVI) communications and control system allows an operator to remotely access CCTV footage, thermal imaging and radar through SEA-KIT, as well as listen live to the vessel’s surroundings and communicate with others in the vicinity.
“This voyage has been months in the making, and to see it all come together today is amazing”, said Ben Simpson, managing director of SEA-KIT International Ltd. “It demonstrates not only the capacity of SEA-KIT and the robustness of the design, but the value and effectiveness of the cloud based communications technologies involved in uncrewed transit.”
“SEA-KIT is a fundamentally versatile model. Its potential lies in its ability to be adapted to a range of tasks, whether it be transit, hydrographic surveys, environmental missions, or marine safety and security. We’re tremendously excited to push the technology to its limits and see what we can achieve.”
The UK to Belgium transit was made possible with the support of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, the Department for Transport, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, partners in Belgium, and the European Space Agency. With this voyage completed, the team behind the mission will now set their sights on higher goals to test the capabilities of the vessel.
SEA-KIT was developed for, and used with, the Kongsberg Maritime Hugin AUV System for the GEBCO-Nippon Foundation Alumni Team entry to the Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE, a global competition challenging teams to advance deep-sea technologies for autonomous, fast, high-resolution ocean exploration. The GEBCO-NF team was funded by The Nippon Foundation of Japan, a private, non-profit foundation.
The team’s concept for efficient, safe and cost-effective seafloor mapping utilised the purpose-built Kongsberg Maritime Hugin AUV System, rated to operate at depths of up to 4,500 metres, supported by SEA-KIT, which has the ability to autonomously launch and recover the AUV and acts as a communication link during subsea survey operations.
The GEBCO-NF Alumni Team includes 16 alumni of The Nippon Foundation-GEBCO Postgraduate Training Program at the University of New Hampshire, US, and hail from Russia, Egypt, South Africa, the USA, Mauritius, Peru, Ireland, Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Israel, Poland and Brazil.
The team made it through to the final round is currently in the running for the top prize of $5m. The winner of the Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE will be announced at an awards ceremony in Monaco later this month.
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