SonoWatch® is an autonomous acoustic lookout system designed to detect and identify navigation signals defined in the US Coast Guard Navigation Manual. The system detects, localizes, and determines the navigation meaning of the signal. The initial deployment for SonoWatch will be unmanned surface vessels (USV). SonoWatch is designed around a versatile hardware platform ruggedized for harsh maritime environments that can be expanded through future software updates. SonoWatch provides notification of naval navigation acoustic alerts for the safe operation of surface vessels. The system consists of a 360° field of view acoustic array with an Internet Protocol (IP) network to an industrial computer that processes the acoustic array data and displays the information on a user interface. The acoustic array, the IP network and the computer/processor are all environmentally hardened for extreme temperature environments. McQ has developed signal processing with algorithms to uniquely classify many different acoustic navigation warning signals to meet the Navigation Rules requiring all vessels to have proper “look out” to avoid the risk of collision in any condition of visibility.
McQ is developing a wireless machinery health monitoring system for Navy vessels. This system will continuously monitor for machinery component wear through the continuous collection of various data sources, including vibration and power, enabling the Navy to detect machinery failures before they actually occur. This will optimize maintenance schedules, and reduce fleet maintenance costs/service downtime. Existing instrumentation systems are expensive, require connection points on the ship’s machinery, and do not provide accurate time synchronization across multiple sensors. McQ is developing a design that will advance monitoring technology with smaller and lower cost tools that will facilitate wide-scale deployment to new and existing machinery. This system will provide crucial data to train Navy CBM artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML) based algorithms to detect failures before they occur.
McQ is developing a miniature autonomous Health Monitoring System for Navy missile systems and missile motors. The Navy missiles use solid propellant that ages and is affected by temperature and humidity. The missile propellant is replaced at a maximum every 10 years. The Health Monitor will last 18 years with a small battery supplying power to the extremely low power consumption electronics. The Health Monitor measures temperature, humidity, pressure, shock, vibration and chemicals. The Health Monitor is small, lightweight, low cost, and remains accurate over the 10 year lifetime. The Health Monitor is compliant with Hazardous Electromagnetic Affects to Ordinance (HERO) requirements. The transducers, electronics components and the embedded software are optimized for extremely low power consumption to provide an 18 year plus lifetime on the batteries.