Leidos recently participated in Trident Spectre 2015, the Annual Invitational Naval Experimentation Exercise. During the exercise, Leidos employed their 40-foot Pathfinder autonomous surface vessel operating on the Mississippi Gulf Coast to identify contacts of interest and transmit radar tracks and photo images to the Tactical Operations Center at Ft. Story, Virginia.
With only a navigational chart of the area loaded into its memory and inputs from its commercial off the shelf (COTS) radars, the Pathfinder sailed the complicated, inshore environment of this portion of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway avoiding shoal water, aids and hazards to navigation, and other vessels in the area while autonomously completing assigned tasks.
Pathfinder is also being used to test software and sensors for the DARPA ACTUV Program. Construction of Sea Hunter, the first ACTUV vessel, continues at Vigor Shipyard in Oregon. Sea Hunter is scheduled to launch in early 2016 and begin testing in the Columbia River shortly thereafter.
