Seagnal, Arkeocean and Bourbon Subsea Services form the DESPOT consortium, led by Arkeocean and winner of France 2030 to develop the "Deep Seabed" with the development of a positioning and guidance system for autonomous underwater drones navigating in swarms.

As part of the "Deep Seabed" component of France 2030, Arkeocean, leading a partnership with Bourbon Subsea Services and Seagnal, is developing DESPOT (DEep Swarm POsiTioning), a positioning and guidance system for swarms of autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (AUVs). The DESPOT system will enable swarms composed of a very large number of AUVs operating at depths of up to 3,000 meters to position and guide themselves with an accuracy of less than 5 meters. DESPOT will be applied to swarms used for seabed data collection and ocean observation in the energy, defense, and environmental sectors.  

The DESPOT concept is based on the combination of a "deep base", connected to the surface ship, with "Long Base Line" AUVs which will guide and position the AUV swarm.

ARKEOCEAN, the project leader, brings technological building blocks and expertise in the design and integration of complete systems. SEAGNAL's expertise in sonar and signal processing is essential for this project. Finally, BOURBON's presence in the consortium provides operational know-how and engineering skills critical to the design of a robust system capable of operating at great depths.

The completion of the development of the DESPOT system and its sea tests is planned for the end of 2026 and the first commercialization of an industrialized DESPOT system in 2028.

Lien partenaire: France 2030: Arkeocean to develop DESPOT, a system for positioning and guiding swarms composed of thousands of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) for deep-sea exploration - Arkeocean