Navy supports Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto

On 18, 19 and 20 January 2017, the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, OceanScan MST, the Portuguese Navy (Destination of Sappers No.3 and the Hydrographic Institute) conducted several joint tests to evaluate the performance of autonomous submarine vehicles (AUV) in the execution of surveys with sonar of lateral scanning and magnetometer.

On January 18 and 20, operations took place on the Tagus River (Mar da Palha) on board the Mindelo class vessel and using 3 autonomous submarine vehicles equipped with lateral scanning sonar. It was possible to validate the coordinated use of 3 vehicles to cover an area equivalent to about 30 football stadiums in just over 1 hour.

On the 19th the operations took place on board the Portuguese Navy's inspection boat “Centauro” off Sesimbra. The aim of this test was to validate the integration into the underwater autonomous vehicle of a magnetometer and compare its effectiveness with the towed magnetometers. For this purpose, a metal alloy barrel was fused in a well-known location, and then surveys were carried out with the different equipment (the magnetometer towed by the Hydrographic Institute and the magnetometer of the submarine autonomous vehicle).