DEEPDRIFT

UUV survey autonomy for mine countermeasures, ISR, and hydrography. Cognis Digital LLC · US-only.

DEEPDRIFT plans and evaluates undersea survey missions for an unmanned underwater vehicle: it lays down a boustrophedon "lawnmower" survey sized to the sonar swath, navigates GPS-denied by DVL + inertial dead reckoning with surfacing/USBL fixes, budgets acoustic comms, and detects, classifies, and maps mine-like bottom contacts for clearance.

Detection, survey, and ISR — not weapons. DEEPDRIFT locates and characterizes hazards (mine countermeasures), maps the seabed, and collects ISR. It carries no weapon and does nothing offensive.

Why

The Navy's Lionfish / REMUS-class small UUVs run autonomous mine-countermeasures surveys with side-scan sonar out to ~305 m depth, with ~0.1%-of-distance navigation accuracy. DEEPDRIFT is the open mission-planning + coverage + contact-triage layer for that mission profile.

Capabilities

• Side-scan sonar geometry (sonar) — swath and usable ground range from altitude and slant range, overlap-aware lane spacing, shadow-length → target-height estimate.
• Lawnmower survey planner (survey) — parallel survey lines with alternating direction over a rectangular box, track length, coverage fraction.
• Undersea navigation (nav) — DVL + INS dead reckoning with REMUS-class drift, surface-GPS and USBL fixes, per-leg track integration, fix-needed flagging.
• Acoustic comms (acoustic) — data rate vs range, one-way/round-trip latency (~1500 m/s), message-delivery time, USBL slant→horizontal range + accuracy.
• MCM contacts (contacts) — rule-based MILCO/NOMBO classification with confidence, proximity de-duplication across passes, prioritized reacquire target list.
• Mission + preflight (mission, safety) — endurance/energy model, coverage, duration, and dispatch gates: full coverage, depth rating, endurance, nav-drift budget with fix cadence, geofence.

Quick start (CLI)

python -m deepdrift survey --origin 36.60,-121.90 \
  --along 2000 --across 1000 --heading 90 \
  --altitude 8 --depth 40 --mode mine_countermeasures

Library

from deepdrift import (LatLon, SurveyArea, SideScanSonar, SurveyMission,
                       SurveyMode, preflight, McmClassifier, Contact, ContactManager)

area = SurveyArea(LatLon(36.60, -121.90), along_track_m=2000, across_track_m=1000, heading_deg=90)
m = SurveyMission("mcm", SurveyMode.MCM, area, SideScanSonar(max_slant_range_m=100)).build()
print(m.summary(), preflight(m).cleared)

# triage a detected contact
cc = McmClassifier().classify(Contact(LatLon(36.6,-121.9), 1.5, 0.6, 0.5, 1.2))
print(cc.classification, cc.confidence)   # MILCO ...

Tests

python -m pytest -q      # 649 tests

Part of the Cognis unmanned logistics program

Sister platforms: DROPWING (expendable aerial resupply), MULEWAY (UGV last-mile resupply & CASEVAC). Shared comms via edgemesh; GPS-denied PNT via spoofwatch.