Unmanned and autonomous marine systems provider ASV Global has opened a new mission control centre at its headquarters in Portchester, UK.

The centre has been designed to help ASV Global continue with the creation of its ASView autonomous vessel control system.

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It will also allow the company to operate and monitor its worldwide fleet of autonomous surface vehicles (ASVs) via satellite communication.

Development of the new centre was partly supported by Innovate UK funding, and will further allow ASV Global to carry out training and simulation exercises on behalf of vessel operators.

The Innovate UK funding was granted in 2015 under a project called ‘Unmanned Safe Maritime Operations over the Horizon’, which tasked ASV Global’s autonomous system engineering team to research and develop both the technology and the regulatory requirements of operating autonomous vessels over the horizon.

"This new Mission Control Centre will be instrumental in our continuing developments and will demonstrate our ability to achieve advanced, safe, autonomous operations at sea."

ASV Global technical director Richard Daltry said: “As a result of this Innovate UK project and our portfolio of complimentary research and development programmes, I am proud to say that we are now ready to start real world testing of our autonomous over the horizon control system.

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“This new Mission Control Centre will be instrumental in our continuing developments and will demonstrate our ability to achieve advanced, safe, autonomous operations at sea.”

ASV Global previously entered into a licensing agreement with the UK’s Ministry of Defence for the use of the advanced unmanned surface vehicle (USV) capability technology in September, which was developed using funding from the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl).

The funds allowed ASV Global to demonstrate its advanced autonomous navigation capability at the Royal Navy’s unmanned warrior exercise, which was held in October.

Image: ASV Global’s new mission control centre in Portchester, UK. Photo: courtesy of ASV Global.

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