Kraken to Equip New AUV Customer with AquaPix Sonar and SeaPower Batteries

Canadian marine technology company Kraken Robotics Inc. announced new purchase orders for a 6,000-meter rated AquaPix MINSAS 120 sonar and SeaPower batteries totaling over $1.2 million from a new autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) customer. Due to customer confidentiality, Kraken cannot provide more details at this time. The company expects to fulfill these orders in 2021.

Kraken’s batteries and sensors will be integrated on this customer’s survey-grade AUV and this order follows initial integration and sea trials of Kraken’s AquaPix MINSAS in 2020. Kraken’s AquaPix MINSAS is an off the shelf configurable SAS which replaces high end sidescan systems at an affordable price, while delivering significantly higher resolution, range, and area coverage rates (ACR). The increased range and resolution and associated higher ACR of SAS over traditional systems can significantly expand the capabilities of the customer’s AUV systems for a variety of tasks for naval, scientific, and commercial applications. Kraken’s MINSAS is capable of 2 cm x 2 cm Ultra High-Definition SAS imaging which is ideal for stringent requirements of marine mineral surveys.

The integration of Kraken’s SeaPower 6,000-meter rated pressure tolerant batteries will enable the customer to nearly double its mission durations. Extended bottom time is a highly beneficial feature to deep water AUVs as it increases area coverage rates while reducing the number of launch and recovery operations per survey which is the highest risk component of the mission.

Kraken’s unique pressure tolerant gel encapsulation technology for lithium polymer batteries provides an attractively priced, environmentally friendly, and superior alternative to the oil compensated batteries currently used for subsea battery applications. Kraken’s hot swappable batteries are modular and include an integrated battery management system within each battery module which provides a very high level of redundancy and safety to the vehicle.