Kraken Robotics receives RaaS contract from Canadian government

ST. JOHN’S — Kraken Robotics Inc. announces that it has signed a Robotics as a Service (RaaS) contract with the Canadian government for testing of Kraken’s ultra-high resolution survey equipment with the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN). This $0.5 million contract is funded under the Canadian government’s Innovative Solutions Canada program, and the testing department for this service offering is the RCN’s Fleet Diving Unit Atlantic (FDU-A) based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The RCN has a mandate to develop and maintain an advanced sonar imaging and data storage capability for all three coasts, and to deploy this capability to national and international areas of interest. Under the contract, Kraken will deploy its KATFISH™ towed SAS sonar system and will integrate a Kraken Light Weight SAS (LW-SAS) onboard a Hydroid REMUS 100 Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) owned by FDU-A. This contract will be completed by March 31, 2022.

FDU-A uses a number of different seabed imaging sonar solutions for their various mission requirements, including Towed Sonars Systems (typically deployed from a Kingston-class MCDV vessel, with a crew of 40 persons), and Light Weight Sonar Systems (typically deployed from REMUS-class AUVs).

• Towed KATFISH™ Synthetic Aperture Sonar (SAS) system, deployed on a Surface Vessel of Opportunity (the R/V Ocean Seeker). This could also be tested onboard an RCN Asset (such as the Kingston-class MCDV). One purpose of the test is to show that in combination with RaaS, vessels of opportunity can also be used at a lower cost and higher availability to augment the RCN’s capabilities.
• Untethered Light Weight SAS system, deployed on an RCN Underwater Vessel of Opportunity (REMUS 100 AUV), and tested with the KATFISH™ system above. A purpose of this test is to show that RaaS can be quickly added to existing RCN assets, to augment their capabilities.

Kraken believes its RaaS offering could provide significant benefits to other navies around the world.

Commenting on this contract, Karl Kenny, Kraken President and CEO noted, “Kraken is excited to be able to offer RaaS to the RCN as an “Early Adopter” to augment existing RCN Route Survey with a Service offering based on the latest SAS technology available. Kraken seeks to offer our Robotics as a Service globally, in particular to other NATO allies, and this contract for the RCN’s evaluation will serve as an excellent reference. The RCN’s objective comparison of the data from our RaaS offering against legacy sonar data will provide demonstrative evidence of the superior image resolution and accuracy of Kraken survey data.”