As an industry-leading developer of underwater imaging sensors, ELWAVE’s innovative solutions provide real-time perception capabilities for a wide range of commercial, industrial and defense applications.
The center of ELWAVE’s technology is their unique Controlled Electric Detection and Ranging (CEDAR) solution, based on electrical sensory perception of tropical freshwater fish.
These sea creatures, such as the Elephantnose fish, use this capability not only to navigate, but also to hunt prey and communicate with each other in challenging environments where sight and echolocation are ineffective.
ELWAVE’s CEDAR imitates this by generating a low-frequency AC electric field that is disrupted by objects in the near vicinity, causing changes in current intensity. These disturbances can be measured and used to characterize the underwater environment even in extremely murky conditions.
This technology can be applied to a broad range of applications, including:
- Survey & Monitoring, such as cable and pipeline tracking, as well as oil and gas infrastructure maintenance.
- Archaeology & Salvage, picking up both metallic and non-metallic objects on the sea floor or buried in sediment at cultural heritage sites, shipwrecks, or structural remains.
- Critical Infrastructure Security at intruder detection at port and waterway facilities, including docks, nuclear power stations, and oil terminals.
- Underwater Vehicle Navigation, which can be used with cameras and sonars to enhance its effective detection range of up to five times the length of the subsea vehicle, enabling both navigation and obstacle avoidance.
- UXO & EOD, thanks to the technology’s ability to detect ferrous and non-ferrous objects, ELWAVE’s technology supports naval and commercial dive teams to clear subsea hazards.
Octopulse is the company’s modular solution for underwater vehicles and fixed installations, using CEDAR and its eight electrodes to provide 360-degree real-time perception for highly effective detection, localisation and classification of both metallic and non-metallic objects as well as buried targets.
It delivers exceptional performance in noisy and high-sediment environments, working in freshwater and saltwater as well as in air. With no moving parts, Octopulse requires very little maintenance and can be used for contactless characterisation of any kind of surface or material. It is currently available as a 300 metre depth-rated version, with a 6000 metre-rated version under development.
One of ELWAVE’s other implementations of CEDAR comes in the form of Tetrapulse ESENSE 300, the company’s smallest underwater electric sensor that uses an array of four electrodes and can detect buried targets at depths of 1-2 meters, operational up to 300 meters deep.
Visit the company profile to find out more about ELWAVE and keep up with their latest technological developments.
