A defense contractor's UUV program had a problem. The vehicles collected acoustic data just fine. But to classify what they found, they had to surface and phone home. In contested waters, surfacing to check email is a bad plan.
Defense Contractor (Autonomous Maritime Division)
Defense - Maritime Systems
UUV Signal Processing & Autonomous Analytics
Expanso
14 months from contract to first sea trial
37% improvement in mission completion rate
The existing UUV collected 47GB of acoustic data per mission. Then it surfaced, transmitted everything via satellite at $8/MB, and waited for shore analysts to tell it what to do. The whole cycle took 6 hours. In an operational scenario, that UUV would be debris.
We put the analyst on the vehicle. Expanso runs signal classification models on the UUV's existing ARM compute board. 67ms to classify an acoustic signature. Vehicle decides what to do without asking anyone. When it finally surfaces, it sends a summary - not 47GB of raw recordings.
Signal classification runs on the vehicle's ARM Cortex-A72 at 67ms per event. No GPU required. No extra power budget. The model fits in 340MB of RAM alongside mission control software.
Vehicle runs a behavior tree that responds to classified signals. Interesting contact? Investigate. Threat signature? Evade and log. Normal traffic? Continue mission. No surface required.
When the vehicle surfaces - by choice or schedule - it transmits a 12MB summary instead of 47GB raw data. Satellite costs dropped from $376K to $96 per mission.
First sea trial, the UUV completed a 73-hour mission without surfacing once. Classified 2,847 acoustic events, investigated 3 contacts of interest, and came home with a 12MB report. Previous gen would have surfaced 8 times and spent $3M on satellite.
"We ran a 73-hour mission without surfacing. The vehicle classified 2,847 acoustic contacts, investigated three of them, evaded one potential threat, and came back with a 12-meg report. Previous vehicle would have surfaced 8 times and probably gotten spotted."Chief Systems Engineer, Defense Contractor
If your edge devices have tight power budgets and zero connectivity, we should talk. We've deployed on UUVs, satellites, and other environments where watts matter.