THE WOODLANDS, Texas — Mitcham Industries Inc.’s Klein Marine Systems unit recently received a contract from a leading autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) manufacturer to install its MA-X technology on a next-generation system for evaluation by the U.S. Navy, the company said in a release.
MA-X represents a cost-effective gap-filler solution that has long been sought by the industry. Traditional side scan sonar imaging creates a nadir gap in the center of the image.
By removing this gap, MA-X eliminates the need for overlapping survey lines time to achieve 100% coverage. For the operators of AUVs, this translates into extended mission duration, or shorter time to cover the same area.
One of the key discriminators of MA-X, particularly for the defense sector, is the ability to produce high-quality imagery of the nadir area that is comparable to the traditional side scan. This allows for the data acquired from MA-X to be fed directly into existing automatic target recognition software allowing for automated detection and recognition of targets of interest.
“We are very excited to be a part of this important U.S. Navy program,” said Guy Malden, co-CEO of Mitcham. “We expect the continued acceptance of this technology to rapidly expand our product offerings for the underwater vehicle market. MA-X is another example of the innovation that Mitcham is committed to bring to the industry.”
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