American not-for-profit organisation MITRE has collaborated with marine weather intelligence company Sofar Ocean to advance the development of Bristlemouth, a new connectivity standard aimed at transforming maritime technology.
Bristlemouth is designed to foster peer-to-peer network interoperability and facilitate system integration for ocean sensing and exploration.
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The current landscape of marine technology has been hindered by proprietary hardware interface protocols and complex connections, which have made it challenging to integrate technologies on a large scale.
The introduction of the Bristlemouth standard is expected to dismantle these obstacles, enabling both public and private entities to bring interoperable marine solutions to the market.
Sofar Ocean co-founder and CEO Tim Janssen said: “Bristlemouth is the foundational technology to remove the largest hurdle to unlocking ocean information at scale. Our partnership with MITRE is an important catalyst to accelerate the impact of this critical open standard.”
To expedite the adoption of Bristlemouth, MITRE will fully equip its BlueTech Lab in Massachusetts with the new standard, establishing the world’s inaugural Bristlemouth Centre of Excellence.
This facility will act as a pivotal testbed for developers, providing an environment to fast-track the development of maritime technology solutions.
MITRE chief bluetech strategist Nicholas Rotker said: “To accelerate ocean and maritime technology, we need to eliminate needless burdens and barriers. A connectivity standard for ocean technology will enable new entrants to reduce the time it takes to get innovative hardware from the lab bench to the ocean.”
The development of Bristlemouth is supported by a consortium of stakeholders, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Oceankind, the Office of Naval Research (ONR), Ocean Discovery League, Schmidt Marine Technology Partners, Builders Vision, Dalio Philanthropies, and Aqualink.
In September 2024, Sofar Ocean partnered with the US National Hurricane Centre (NHC) to deliver data for its extreme weather warning systems.
