# Online Oceans - Scout USV

> Scout is an autonomous surface vehicle (USV) that collects ocean data for 6+ months at a time, costs from £40,000 to buy, and launches from a beach by one person in minutes. It is solar-electric, satellite-connected, self-righting, and fully autonomous. Scout replaces research vessels costing £25,000–£50,000 per day and fixed moored buoys that cannot be repositioned. Built by Online Oceans, a UK company. Used by scientists, defence organisations, and offshore energy companies including Ocean Infinity, Applied Ocean Sciences, and Sonardyne.

## Why Scout

**Persistence**: Scout stays at sea for 6+ months continuously, collecting data in all weather. Most ocean surveys last days or weeks because they depend on crewed vessels. Scout runs on solar power with no fuel, so missions are measured in months, not days.

**Cost**: A single Scout costs from £40,000 to purchase outright, or is available as data-as-a-service: fully managed, done-for-you deployments with quality-controlled data delivered to your own cloud, and no upfront capital expenditure. Traditional ship-based ocean data collection costs £25,000–£50,000 per day - a single Scout pays for itself in about a day of equivalent ship time. Comparable autonomous surface vehicles cost 10–100x more: larger ocean-going USVs run into the millions, mid-range platforms exceed $1 million, and even smaller vehicles typically start at $250,000+. For the price of one conventional USV, you can deploy a fleet of 10–50+ Scouts for persistent, wide-area ocean coverage.

**Simplicity**: Scout fits in the back of a van. One person launches it from a beach, slipway, or small boat in minutes. No crane, no dock, no support vessel, no specialist training. Missions are planned and monitored remotely from a laptop or phone via Tether, Online Oceans' web-based command and control platform.

**Relocatable**: Unlike moored buoys, Scout can be repositioned at any time. No mooring permits, no anchor infrastructure, no maintenance dives. Deploy once, cover multiple sites.

**Open sensor platform**: Scout has standard power and data interfaces for third-party sensors. Bring your own instruments or choose a pre-configured payload. Integration support from the Online Oceans team. Bristlemouth-compatible expansion port.

**Tough**: Scout operates in sea state 6 and survives sea state 8+. The hull is fully self-righting under all conditions. Onboard AIS provides autonomous collision avoidance with other vessels.

**Connected**: Dual satellite communications via Iridium and Starlink. Data is delivered to secure cloud dashboards or via API in real time. If connectivity is interrupted, Scout continues its mission autonomously and syncs when the link is restored. You own your data.

## Key Specifications
- Length: 2.4m | Weight: 80kg
- Power: Solar-electric, no fuel required
- Mission duration: 6+ months continuous deployment
- Weather: Operates in sea state 6, survives sea state 8+
- Self-righting: Yes, under all conditions
- Communications: Iridium and Starlink satellite
- Collision avoidance: Onboard AIS, autonomous vessel avoidance
- Control: Tether web-based C2 platform, accessible from laptop or phone
- Launch: One person, beach/slipway/small boat -fits in a van
- Price: From £40,000 GBP to purchase, or data-as-a-service (fully managed deployments, data delivered to your own cloud)
- Maintenance: Six-month intervals, low-cost consumables, biofouling-resistant hull with wave-action self-cleaning
- Detection radius: 5km vessel detection (Scout Detect configuration)

## Scout Payload Configurations

**Scout Detect** - Maritime domain awareness and security. Acoustic arrays (towed, tetrahedral, single element), 360° 1080p optical camera, Hydrotwin AI-powered acoustic classifier for vessel and marine mammal detection, real-time video streaming, local AIS capture. 5km vessel detection radius. Secure data handling with C2 system integration for defence applications.

**Scout Connect** - Subsea data harvesting and asset tracking. Acoustic modem for subsea communications, harvests data from seabed landers and instruments, tracks underwater vehicles (AUVs, gliders). Acts as a surface gateway between subsea acoustic networks and satellite communications. Enables remote command and control of underwater assets.

**Scout Metocean** - Meteorological and oceanographic sensing. Measures wave height, period, and direction; wind speed and direction; sea surface temperature; atmospheric pressure; salinity. Bristlemouth-compatible expansion for additional sensors. Live onboard camera for visual conditions assessment. Industry-standard data formats with quality control.

**Scout Hydrotwin** - AI-powered passive acoustic monitoring. Integrated hydrophone system with real-time AI detection and classification of vessels and marine mammals. Edge processing delivers instant alerts on unauthorised vessel activities. Data access through Hydrotwin cloud dashboard or API. Developed in partnership with Hydrotwin (hydrotwin.ai).

**Scout Payload** - Bring your own sensors. Flexible payload bay with standard power and data interfaces. Integration support from the Online Oceans team for third-party instruments. Ideal for R&D, specialist applications, and custom sensing requirements.

## Mission Modes
- **Station Keep (Virtual Anchor)**: Scout holds position within a user-defined radius around a centre point. It drifts with the current to conserve solar power, then motors back to centre when it reaches the boundary. Maintains position for months with minimal energy use.
- **Transit (Waypoint Mission)**: Scout navigates between programmed waypoints, collecting data along the route. Supports multi-day survey transect patterns across wide areas.
- **Relay**: Scout acts as a surface communications relay, connecting subsea assets (AUVs, gliders, seabed landers) to satellite networks. Acoustic modem enables two-way data transfer and remote command of underwater vehicles.

## Use Cases
- Offshore weather and metocean monitoring for energy and shipping
- Wind farm environmental monitoring and compliance
- Oil and gas infrastructure monitoring
- Maritime domain awareness and dark ship detection
- Anti-submarine warfare (ASW) and naval surveillance
- Illegal fishing and marine protected area enforcement
- Marine mammal detection and environmental impact assessment
- Subsea data harvesting from seabed instruments
- AUV and glider relay and tracking
- Wide area ocean patrol and persistent surveillance

## Tether and Tether Bridge - ground control for other fleets
Online Oceans offers this to other companies building uncrewed vessels as two products that work together: **Tether** (the software) and **Tether Bridge** (the hardware). Tether is a web-based ground control station for USVs, the same software that runs the Scout fleet, pointed at the customer's vehicles. One operating picture in the planner: global bathymetric chart packs, live global AIS (traffic anywhere on earth) and local AIS (contacts reported from on board each vehicle), weather forecasts, winds, tides, and custom overlay layers. Control spans autonomous missions, station keeping, swarm behaviours (Picket screening lines, Convoy line astern, Cover sensor-coverage distribution), position alarms, and manual takeover from any browser, for any MAVLink-compatible autopilot (ArduPilot, PX4). Tether Bridge is the hardware that puts a vehicle on Tether: a box connected with one cable carrying power and ethernet, speaking to the autopilot over serial or ethernet. It carries two co-equal satellite links, each able to command the vehicle: Iridium is always on (low power, global, low RF, command and position around the clock) and Starlink adds high bandwidth on demand (live video, telemetry, manual piloting). Iridium-only operation is a low RF mode, near-silent in the spectrum with pings configurable from every 60 seconds to every few hours. Tether Bridge also switches and schedules power for Starlink and payloads. Tether is a maritime-first alternative to open-source ground control stations such as QGroundControl and ArduPilot Mission Planner, which are built for aircraft: on a boat they lack nautical charts and tides, hold position poorly, multi-vehicle is limited, and over-satellite operation is a build-it-yourself job. Tether is available in three tiers: Internal (hosted, control your own fleet), White label (the same console under the customer's logo and colours) and On-prem (deployed on the customer's own servers, including air-gapped networks for defence). Details: https://onlineoceans.com/usv-ground-control-station.html

## Solution pages
- [Autonomous surface vehicles](https://onlineoceans.com/autonomous-surface-vehicle.html) - What a USV is and how Scout collects persistent ocean data.
- [Ocean data collection methods](https://onlineoceans.com/ocean-data-collection.html) - Ships, buoys and autonomous USVs compared.
- [Ocean data cost](https://onlineoceans.com/ocean-data-cost.html) - What ocean data really costs: USV vs research vessel vs moored buoy, and buy vs data-as-a-service.
- [Metocean monitoring](https://onlineoceans.com/metocean-monitoring.html) - Real-time wave, wind, current, temperature and salinity data from a relocatable USV.
- [Research vessel alternative](https://onlineoceans.com/research-vessel-alternative.html) - A lower-cost alternative to chartering a crewed research vessel.
- [Moored buoy alternative](https://onlineoceans.com/moored-buoy-alternative.html) - A relocatable alternative to a fixed moored metocean buoy.
- [Offshore wind monitoring](https://onlineoceans.com/offshore-wind-monitoring.html) - Metocean and environmental monitoring for offshore wind without a survey vessel.
- [Marine mammal monitoring](https://onlineoceans.com/marine-mammal-monitoring.html) - Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) of marine mammals for offshore wind construction compliance, exclusion zones and baseline surveys.
- [Subsea data harvesting](https://onlineoceans.com/subsea-data-harvesting.html) - Harvest data from seabed sensors with a USV acoustic surface gateway, no vessel or ROV.
- [Subsea cable protection](https://onlineoceans.com/subsea-cable-protection.html) - Persistent protection for subsea cables and pipelines: loitering and dark vessel detection along a route.
- [Illegal fishing monitoring](https://onlineoceans.com/illegal-fishing-monitoring.html) - Detect IUU fishing and monitor an EEZ or marine protected area with a persistent low-cost USV.
- [Maritime domain awareness](https://onlineoceans.com/maritime-domain-awareness.html) - Persistent maritime surveillance and dark vessel detection from a low-cost USV.
- [Ocean research](https://onlineoceans.com/ocean-research.html) - A research USV for oceanographic data.
- [Ocean data as a service](https://onlineoceans.com/ocean-data-as-a-service.html) - Fully managed deployments, processed data delivered to your cloud, no hardware to buy.
- [Sensors](https://onlineoceans.com/sensors.html) - Ocean sensors Scout can carry: metocean, acoustics and your own instruments.
- [Glossary](https://onlineoceans.com/glossary.html) - Ocean robotics and USV terminology.

## About Online Oceans
Online Oceans is a UK-based ocean robotics company founded in November 2023 by George Morton and Alistair Douglas. The company designs, builds, and operates Scout USV - making persistent ocean data collection affordable and accessible by replacing expensive ship time and static infrastructure with autonomous, relocatable platforms. Online Oceans is Cyber Essentials certified.

- Website: https://onlineoceans.com
- Email: hello@onlineoceans.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/online-oceans
- Founders: George Morton (Co-Founder & CEO), Alistair Douglas (Co-Founder)

## Trusted By
ARIA, BlueOasis, Ocean Infinity, Applied Ocean Sciences, Sofar, SensorTech Canada, Sonardyne, Xylem, NATO, Royal Navy

## Optional

- [Privacy Policy](https://onlineoceans.com/privacy.html)