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Nauticus Robotics’ Aquanaut, an autonomous subsea robot. | Source: Nauticus Robotics

Nauticus Robotics, Inc., a developer of autonomous robots using artificial intelligence for data collection and intervention service for the ocean economies, announced it has been awarded an additional $2.7 million under its current contract with Leidos Holdings, Inc., a FORTUNE 500 science and technology leader. The funded extension allows continued development of an Aquanaut-derivative in preparation for customer adoption decisions and government opportunities expected later this year.

The state-of-the-art subsea platform, an unmanned underwater vehicle (“UUV”) with advanced artificial intelligence, sensing capabilities, and more can perform a growing number of jobs without hazarding human divers. This program has received $14.5 million in funding from Leidos since 2022, and the technology developed is expected to underpin major future government opportunities.

Like Nauticus‘ commercial UUV platform, Aquanaut, this derivative robot features technology to support security activities and is advancing to complete longer and more challenging missions. In addition, this award allows further autonomous behavior and operational capability enhancements to toolKITT, Nauticus’ proprietary software package developed to enable an ecosystem of autonomous actions for subsea vehicles and serves as the foundation for this work.

“I am very proud of our team’s performance resulting in this follow-on award, further cementing our partnership with Leidos,” said Nicolaus Radford, founder and CEO of Nauticus. “This very important work combines great attributes from each company to deploy a truly novel subsea capability.”

Nauticus Robotics is a developer of autonomous robots using artificial intelligence for data collection and intervention services for the ocean industries. Nauticus’ robotic systems and services are delivered to commercial and government-facing customers through a Robotics-as-a-Service (RaaS) business model and direct product sales for both hardware platforms and software licenses.