Novel underwater sensing

This seminar and call is seeking novel solutions from all domains to address the wide range of challenges facing force protection at sea. For the purposes of this call, five specific challenges are highlighted below. This list is not exhaustive but emphasises the focus on acoustic and non-acoustic concepts and direct and indirect methods that can be exploited by a wide variety of organic and offboard systems and offer a step change in operational capability. Challenge 1 – Next generation sensing systems Challenge 2 – Novel Automated Target Recognition (ATR) methods for sonar imagery Challenge 3 – Advanced synthetic aperture processing Challenge 4 – Effective gathering and exploitation of environment information Challenge 5 – Optimised sensing What we want - We want novel concepts and sensing solutions that deliver the full potential of all types of organic and offboard systems. Solutions should be trying to make the most of emerging technology and/or optimise combinations of existing technologies. Solutions should emphasise the effective (and cost-effective) use of relevant information to support decision making. All suppliers are encouraged to submit their best ideas however unusual or outrageous they may at first appear. In particular, we would welcome proposals from outside the maritime domain where there is an opportunity for solutions employed in other applications to be used for underwater sensing for the first time. What we don't want - We do not want the same signal processing that has been tried and failed before, developments of existing processing schemes, well understood acoustic or non-acoustic technology, or sonar array designs. We don't just want solutions for underwater sonar systems. This subject is not just for the maritime community and we encourage the cross over of novel technologies from other domains. The call will close on 15 Sep 2010. This event is being hosted by QinetiQ and held at their Whittle Theatre at Cody Technology Park, Farnborough. It should be noted, however, that the call for proposals is from and funded only by the MOD and any proposals will only be seen and assessed by MOD staff in accordance with our normal procedures.