Waterside - A Holistic Approach to Munition Clearance in North and Baltic Sea

Abstract

During and after the First and Second World War substantial quantities of munition were shot, lost, and offloaded into the North and Baltic Sea. This unexploded ordnance (UXO) poses a significant hazard to the marine environment and, subsequently, to humans. Hence, the removal of UXOs is of great importance. Currently, the munition is only removed locally and on a small scale. However, to dispose of the estimated amount of over 1.6 million tons of UXOs a holistic and scalable approach is needed. The Waterside project aims to achieve exactly that. The method developed within this project looks at the entire process chain from detection and classification to the removal of the munitions. It provides optimized algorithms for the detection and classification. Furthermore it implements novel sensing capabilities onboard autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) as well as the implementation of a teleoperation for an underwater manipulator. Those efforts are being supported by the creation of a situational awareness system.