Shom the French Hydrographic & Oceanographic Service Orders New Maritime Drone
Following a 7-month competitive bidding process, the French Hydrographic and Oceanographic Service
(Shom) placed an order at the end of December for a new autonomous underwater micro-drone (μAUV), the NemoSens model, manufactured by the French company RTsys. This order is part of the transformation plan for hydrographic and oceanographic data acquisition methods launched by Shom in 2024.
SHOM 4.0 AT THE SERVICE OF OCEAN KNOWLEDGE
Meeting civilian and military needs for certified and relevant information to support increasingly rapid decisionmaking, across expanded areas of interest and even in the deep sea; This is the objective pursued today by the French Hydrographic and Oceanographic Service (Shom) in a rapidly changing geopolitical and environmental context.
The use of the latest generation of drones—underwater, surface, and aerial—and the replacement of the
French Navy’s three coastal hydrographic vessels with two new-generation hydrographic vessels (BHNG), equipped not only with drone capabilities but also with comprehensive data collection capabilities from coastal areas to the abyssal seabed, will contribute to accelerating the production cycle of data and services.
THE NEMOSENS, THE FIRST AUTONOMOUS UNDERWATER MICRO-DRONE FOR SHOM
The first autonomous underwater micro-drone ordered by Shom, NemoSens®, rapidly deployable and
manufactured by the French company RTsys, will be delivered in the first half of 2026. This new acquisition system, equipped with a single-frequency side-scan sonar and a magnetometer, aims to improve high resolution knowledge of the continental shelf seabed (down to 200 meters), a strategic area with significant civilian and military implications. The objective is to have a lightweight, easily deployable and recoverable system capable of meeting diverse needs for the benefit of the armed forces, marine public policy, and ocean protection. It will offer agile intervention capabilities, adapted to the operational constraints of the continental shelf and complementary to those of the deep-sea autonomous underwater drone.
With this acquisition, the French Hydrographic and Oceanographic Service (Shom) reinforces its central role in describing the marine physical environment and in supporting national strategies for knowledge,
sovereignty, and control of the seabed.
NEMOSENS
NemoSens® is a micro autonomous underwater vehicle (μAUV) designed for scientific, industrial, and defense applications. Compact (less than one meter) and lightweight (less than 10 kg), its various payload configurations allow for great flexibility and maximum usability.
NemoSens® incorporates the latest hardware and software updates from the RTsys product line, making this micro AUV the most powerful of its generation. NemoSens® is composed of four sections: a removable nose with onboard connectors for integrating different payloads; a central section including a multifunction mast (GNSS antenna, Wi-Fi antenna, UHF communication, flasher) as well as onboard sensors such as a 900 kHz Side Scan Sonar, an acoustic transducer for real-time tracking from the surface, and various internal sensors; the battery section; and finally, a rear propulsion section allowing it to reach speeds of 2 to 6 knots depending on the configuration. Due to its versatility, the use cases of NemoSens® are very varied, ranging from 2 to 300m depth, for coastal mapping needs, diagnosis and monitoring of submarine cables, pipelines, and port structures, detection of suspicious objects (UXO, underwater mines) and reconnaissance/securing of areas, or even water quality measurements and monitoring of biological studies.
