HYDRO‑01 · Technical appendix
Architecture, envelope, trials, limits.
The technical facts of HYDRO‑01 — no narrative. For the campaign context: the HYDRO‑01 page.
Architecture
Documentation being written.
Operational envelope
- Compact USV platform · BIUTOPIC instrumented architecture
- 2× T200 thrusters
- 100 Ah battery
- 150 W solar
- 4G link
- Mission range ~15 km
- Top speed 5.6 kt
- Supervised autonomous navigation
Completed trials
2026 North Atlantic campaign — convoy by road and ferry (Brittany → Denmark → Faroe Islands), sea trials in Faroese coastal waters. Convoy ≠ autonomous navigation.
Preliminary 15-mission register published on the HYDRO‑01 page — validated logs to come.
Known limits
- Waterproofing — Moisture gets in before water does: cable glands and hatches needed several rework passes after the first sorties. Seals and glands being redone.
- Battery-management resilience — Cold Faroese water cuts usable capacity and skews state-of-charge estimates. Safety margins widened while finer management is developed.
- Communication redundancy — One 4G link loss during a mission, recovered via fallback procedure: dual-link design became a priority.
- Solar integration — 150 W under near-continuous Nordic light: real but irregular yield — shading and incidence angle matter more than peak power.
- Launch and recovery — One recovered capsize set the standard: two-operator procedure and dedicated grab points on the hull.
- Maintenance in remote conditions — Repairing on a windswept slipway without a workshop dictated simple choices: standard fasteners, unpluggable modules, minimal spares carried.
Preliminary learnings — logs being consolidated.