Drone Technology Drives Development

Development work for new robotic boat technology for Army is progressing at BlueZone Group driven by technologies available from the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) or ‘drone’ world.

BlueZone Group CTO, Darren Burrowes, said that the large amount of lightweight and low-cost technologies developed for drone applications provided many options for application to the Robotic Z-Boat. “Miniaturisation of navigation systems such as Inertial Navigation Systems and GPS are very suitable for our applications,” said Darren, ‘Combined with sensors such as LiDAR and multi-beam sonar the Z-Boats can provide a powerful capability in an easily deployed package.” The gimbal system used to mount a pan-tilt-zoom camera is manufactured from carbon fibre and was originally designed for mounting on a UAV.

Army Z-Boats is scheduled for demonstration in August completing a rapid development project that will enable early testing and assessment of the technology for several applications.