ST. JOHN'S, NEWFOUNDLAND--(Marketwired - June 20, 2017) - Kraken Sonar Inc. (TSX VENTURE: PNG) is pleased to announce that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Kraken Sonar Systems Inc. successfully demonstrated real-time unmanned mine-hunting capabilities using Kraken's AquaPix® Synthetic Aperture Sonar (SAS) during the Belgian Defense Mine Countermeasure (MCM) trials held last week at the naval base in Zeebrugge, Belgium.

Kraken's AquaPix® sonar was deployed onboard a customer's Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) to survey the target area and enabled detection, classification and identification of MCM targets in a single pass.

Kraken also successfully demonstrated real-time, onboard SAS processing using its latest generation Real Time SAS signal processor. This was critical in assisting the AUV to provide onboard sonar data workflow, automated target detection and in-stride automated target recognition. Real-time onboard processing provided ultra-high 3cm x 3cm resolution images of mine like objects while the AUV simultaneously carried out its mine-hunting mission. This significantly reduced requirements for post mission analysis and enabled high quality seabed intelligence to be rapidly transferred to the MCM mission operators and supervisors.

Conditions in the North Sea were typically challenging for the time of year, yielding Beaufort sea states of up to Sea State 5 and wind gusts up to 30 knots. Tidal currents of up to 1.7 knots were observed. Significant quantities of suspended sediment resulted in very high turbidity, severely impairing the performance of conventional side scan sonar systems. The severe bathymetry variations in the form of "sand ripples" proved challenging for most of the other sonar systems involved in the trials.

Despite these challenges, Kraken successfully detected a significant quantity of targets in the assigned search area and produced well focused images of the full survey area. Further details will be provided after the Belgian Navy's official analysis of results.

Karl Kenny, Kraken President and CEO said, "We are very pleased with the excellent results that we achieved during this exercise, especially given the harsh operating environment in the North Sea. Kraken's AquaPix® SAS detected targets at longer ranges and with higher resolution imagery of underwater than conventional sonar. In addition, AquaPix® provided a significant reduction in false contacts, thus increasing the area search/clearance rates by up to an order of magnitude. This exercise has clearly demonstrated that Kraken remains a world leader in advanced sonar and robotics technology."

ABOUT KRAKEN

Kraken Sonar Inc. (TSX VENTURE: PNG) is a marine technology company, founded in 2012, that is dedicated to the production and sale of software-centric sensors and underwater robotic systems. The company is headquartered in St. John's, Newfoundland with offices in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia; Bremen, Germany; and Fairfax, Virginia. For more information, please visit www.krakensonar.com, www.krakenrobotik.de, www.krakenpower.de.

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