Sonardyne Inc. has announced that its integrated navigation, positioning and communications technology will support Cellula Robotics’ new, fuel cell-powered long-range UUV, which is being designed for the Canadian defense department.

Known as Solus-LR, the UUV is being designed to be able to travel up to 2,000 kilometers, and stay submerged for missions stretching months at a time with support from an onboard fuel cell power pack.

Cellula Robotics has ordered one of Sonardyne’s high-performance SPRINT-Nav subsea navigation instruments for the UUV so that it can meet these long-duration and long-distance navigational requirements. SPRINT-Nav combines a SPRINT INS, Syrinx 600 kHz DVL and a high accuracy intelligent pressure sensor in a single housing, making it one of the smallest and highest performing combined inertial navigation instruments on the market, Sonardyne says. 

Cellula Robotics has also ordered a Micro-Ranger 2 Ultra-Short BaseLine (USBL) system with optional Marine Robotics software feature pack, and an AvTrak 6 combined transponder and telemetry transceiver—which will be integrated into the UUV—so that it can track the vehicle from the surface, receive data packages from it, and send mission commands to it.

Described as Sonardyne’s most compact underwater target tracking system, Micro-Ranger 2 is built around Sonardyne’s 6G hardware and Wideband 2 digital acoustic technology platform, which delivers consistently in any operational scenario, the company says. 

Sea trials of the Solus-LR are expected to start later this year, and will run through early next year. They will be held close to Cellula’s Robotics’ headquarters, in the Indian Arm fjord, near Vancouver, British Columbia.