Three presentations at last month’s IEEE/ Marine Technology Society OCEANS'16 Conference in Monterey, CA presented research on underwater munitions response technologies sponsored by SERDP.

Dr. Donya Frank’s presentation, “Investigating Munitions Mobility in Oscillatory Flow with Inertial Measurement Units” covered aspects of the phenomenology of submerged munitions. She constructed surrogate munitions with internal sensors to record their rolling and movement caused by hydrodynamic forces. This work was part of SERDP projects MR-2410 and MR-2320 to better understand how submerged munitions migrate or remain in place.

John Hall presented “Underwater UXO Classification using Matched Subspace Classifier with Synthetic Sparse Dictionaries”.  This broad-band sonar processing technique coupled with machine learning can automatically classify submerged ordnance. The method appears useful for detailed surveys of munitions response areas. His research was conducted under SERDP project MR-2416.

Dan Sternlicht presented “Advanced Sonar Technologies for High Clearance Rate Mine Countermeasures”. He described his team’s successful integration of mobility, positioning, sonars and post-processing systems for two medium-size autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). The systems have the potential to perform munitions response duties for both detailed surveys and wide area assessment. Sonar image processing developed under SERDP project MR-2439 was part of the effort.

Please contact the Munitions Response Program Manager if you have further questions about this research area.