NSWC Panama City Division’s MEASUR: Revolutionizing underwater safety through subsea recognition

NSWC Panama City Division's MEASUR: Revolutionizing underwater safety through subsea recognition

By Shauna Love-vonKnoblauch, NSWC PCD Public Affairs

A groundbreaking initiative at Naval Surface Warfare Center Panama City Division (NSWC PCD) is poised to significantly enhance the safety and operational effectiveness of the U.S. Navy.

Developed by scientists and engineers within the Subsea & Seabed Warfare and Maritime Operations Department, the Mission Effectiveness & Assessment with Subsea Recognition (MEASUR) project leverages Naval Innovative Science and Engineering (NISE) funding to automatically and accurately assess physical damage to underwater objects.

This technology aims to impact quantitative Battle Damage Assessment (BDA) methods for subsea threats, which can jeopardize warfighters and high-value assets transiting through poorly understood waters. To address this challenge, the team focused on a hybrid technological approach.

"By combining advanced sensors with artificial intelligence (AI), this project will significantly strengthen our Navy's capabilities," said Dr. Frank Crosby, NSWC PCD NISE director.

To execute this vision, the team equipped the command's Science & Technology Engineering Innovation Vehicle (STEIV), a versatile unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV), with high-resolution sonar and electro-optic cameras. This sensor suite gathers detailed 3D point cloud and image data from subsea objects. This data is then fed into a sophisticated vision-based machine learning pipeline designed to detect and analyze physical damage, providing reliable, in-situ inspection results. This automated process is vital for determining if a threat has been neutralized, if critical infrastructure is damaged, or if an operational area is safe for naval vessels.

This technology is expected to impact operations broadly across the Warfare Centers and the fleet. MEASUR aims to provide more reliable information about underwater threats, which directly translates to improved warfighter safety. By delivering accurate and rapid damage assessments, the system enables combatant commanders with more informed decision-making data during operational planning and accelerates the entire damage assessment timeline, saving crucial time and resources.

This project's category of investment is technology transition, designed to move innovative research from the lab to real-world application. Initiated as a multi-year NISE effort, MEASUR was a collaborative project involving personnel from NSWC PCD's Subsea & Seabed Warfare and Maritime Operations Department, working closely with the STEIV team to integrate hardware and plan testing. While the initial phase has concluded, the project has successfully packaged the developed algorithms and datasets for future use and completed a UUV-agnostic pressure vessel design.

By successfully merging advanced sensors with AI, MEASUR demonstrates the power of technology to solve critical challenges in the underwater domain, promising a safer and more secure future for naval operations. "MEASUR was a multifaceted and innovative approach to solving an often overlooked and oversimplified aspect of the BDA process, which has a direct impact on keeping our warfighters safe," said Dr. Adriana McKinney, lead project engineer. "The team had a great deal of enthusiasm working on such a relevant problem set."