Three-dimensional sonar specialist FarSounder Inc. today announced it has been awarded a 2.75-year, $2 million grant by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, to support the development of long-range sonar technology for high-speed navigation and obstacle avoidance...

...The company estimates the system could yield economic benefits of up to $500 million per year, through increased efficiency and decreased insurance rates, while also decreasing risks to passengers and the environment.

The project will require “important technological innovations, including the development of high-speed signal processing algorithms to compensate for the ship’s motion, the changing acoustic environment and background noise at high speeds and development of other signal processing methodologies which would extend the state of the art for sonar signal processing,” FarSounder said.