Greensea Systems Inc. acquires C-2 Innovations product line of seafloor crawling robots and creates new company Bayonet Ocean Vehicles
Marine robotics technology specialist Greensea Systems Inc. announced the launch of Bayonet Ocean Vehicles, a new company created to develop, manufacture, and distribute a line of amphibious robots recently acquired from C-2 Innovations Inc.
The deal includes the acquisition of the IP and inventory of C-2 Innovations’ crawling robot product line. The robots have been rebranded and are launched to market as the Bayonet 150, Bayonet 250, and Bayonet 350 vehicles.
Bayonet joins the Greensea group of companies as an independent entity managed by the Greensea Executive Team. Founder of C-2 Innovations Arnis Mangolds joins Bayonet Ocean Vehicles as VP Programs, and previous C-2 Innovations’ Principal Investigator employee, Mike Farinella takes the role of Senior Engineer of the new company. The company is based in Plymouth, Massachusetts, co-located with Greensea, in a newly renovated 17,000 sq.ft state-of-the art manufacturing facility with waterfront access for year-round testing and training.
Bayonet Ocean Vehicles will be attending the Underwater Defence Technology (UDT) conference in Rotterdam and exhibiting a model of the new crawler, the Bayonet 250 on Booth D20
On announcing the launch of Bayonet Ocean Vehicles Ben Kinnaman, founder and CEO of both Greensea and Bayonet commented, “We have been working with C-2 Innovations since 2018, providing them with a C2 software suite built on OPENSEA. The seafloor crawling robot systems they developed are unique because they fill a void in autonomous ocean systems as they can work in the surf zone and carry larger sensor payloads on the seafloor. Bayonet has the resources to scale and advance the product line, and strategically, the crawler product line complements Greensea’s autonomy portfolio for defense applications.”
Bayonet Ocean Vehicles joins the Greensea company portfolio and with that backing has begun larger-scale commercialization of the seafloor crawling robot product line. The Bayonet product line will feature Greensea’s fully open architecture software platform, OPENSEA, which includes precision navigation, payload integration, autonomy, and over-the-horizon command and control. Bayonet has already secured several defense contracts as the platforms are being adopted into sensor placement and Explosive Ordnance Disposal missions. The company will launch a commercial variant of the platform in summer 2022 focused on hydrographic survey, wind farm survey and maintenance, as well as coastal dredging support.
Bayonet Ocean Vehicles’ Vice President of Operations Rich Amirault adds, “Because the conditions that these vehicles operate under – very shallow water, heavy surf, and poor visibility – are the perfect environments for improvised mines, providing an autonomous solution for EOD missions is a necessity. We are building vehicles to go where boats, divers, and ROVs simply cannot go, using software that is proven on thousands of vehicles. It’s exciting to be with the company from the start, making products that I believe in.”
Deployable from land or water independent of weather, the range of Bayonet crawlers have been designed to transit along the ocean floor as well as on land, making them the only robotic platform in the world capable of working between 40fsw and the dunes on the beach as well as in the deep ocean. Their application includes amphibious operations and littoral warfare such as mine detection and clearance, seafloor, beach zone and river surveys, environmental, monitoring and wharf inspections.
