A crewless boat has been driven around the Solent – remotely controlled from a Royal Navy vessel in a first in UK waters.
A Pacific 24 rigid-inflatable craft – the mainstay of small boat operations by the Royal Navy such as rescues, intercepting drug runners and moving sailors from ship to shore – was both remotely and autonomously piloted from experimentation ship XV Patrick Blackett while the pair sailed off the coast of Portsmouth.
The week-long trials pushed the uncrewed vessel to its limits with rough seas and even snow testing its systems and software in a range of operational scenarios.
The autonomous tests saw it pre-programmed to follow certain maneuvers and directions while the remotely-piloted tests saw it controlled by a Royal Marine using a console on board the ship.
While the APAC – Autonomous PACific – has been tested at sea abroad, this was the first time it’s been done in home waters and through the busy waterways of Portsmouth, successfully navigating around ferries, other Royal Navy vessels and private boats.
The trials were run by the Royal Navy’s autonomous experts NavyX who have previously trialed the APAC in Portugal with NATO partners at Exercise Repmus.
But conditions in the Solent raised the stakes and showed how the uncrewed rib can operate like its crewed counterpart in rough waters and all conditions.
With cameras and sensors on board, the robot rib fed back a live camera feed to control units and computers on XV Patrick Blackett with could then be analyzed.
Other sensors and weapons could be added to further enhance its use as a vessel for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations with data fed back in real-time.