IXSEA equips National Oceanography Centre's Autosub6000 AUV with PHINS

The Autosub6000 AUV of the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, has recently returned from its first successful sea trials in the NE Atlantic Ocean equipped with IXSEA's PHINS, Photonic Inertial Navigation System. The AUV's deployments demonstrated its readiness for science missions to at least a depth of 4500 m.

Based on IXSEA's Fiber Optic Gyroscope technology coupled with an embedded digital processor that runs an advanced Kalman filter, PHINS outputs position, heading, roll, pitch, depth, velocity and heave.

"We were very happy with the performance of PHINS during the deep water trials of the Autosub6000 AUV,� said Steve McPhail, Leader of the Autosub6000 project at the National Oceanography Centre. �The navigation system's performance depends on the DVL (RDI 300 kHz Workhorse) and PHINS. During the trials, the navigation calibration indicated that this combination was working to a repeatability of positioning better than 0.1% of distance traveled.�

"The National Oceanography Centre chose PHINS because of its performance and versatility as well as its ease of maintenance,� said IXSEA Ltd. Sales Director, Nick Goodwin.