The new type of sonar designed for the MARIDAN AUVs by Reason, a company providing a large scale of sub-sea applications for the global offshore market, features extremely detailed 3-D images of the seafloor. According to Claus Steenstrup of Reason it is the first wide-sector, wide-band focused multi beam sonar ever to be deployed.

Utilizing 240 dynamically focused beams, the system measures a 120 swath across the seafloor, detects the bottom and provides the measured ranges at a depth resolution of 6 mm. It ensures real-time images of the backscatter intensity display. The sonar system will typically be suited for seafloor measurement tasks, cable inspection and different kind of sub-sea detection work.Claus Steenstrup anticipates significant quality improvement using an AUV platform for the sonar system.

Due to its free-swimming and fully autonomous capabilities, MARIDAN 600 will be extremely quiet and stable during a sonar survey operation.