A New Approach to Multi-Domain Ocean Monitoring: Combining UAS with USVs

This paper presents a new concept for combining uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) with uncrewed surface vehicles (USVs) to for marine monitoring. The Open Ocean Robotics DataCruiser™ USV provides a large payload volume for sensors, solar panels, and batteries. The addition of an embarked UAS from Seahawk Robotics will extend the observational capabilities across vertical and horizontal ranges. The system will address key market needs including monitoring of marine protected areas (MPAs) environmental monitoring for offshore energy, and maritime domain awareness (MDA). This work builds on an established partnership and prior work presented at OCEANS.