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RD Instruments (RDI) is a growing, privately owned acoustic instrumentation manufacturer located in San Diego, California. Founded in 1981 by Fran Rowe and Kent Deines, the company developed the industry's first Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP), a revolutionary device used to remotely measure vertical profiles of the 3-axes water currents.
Through the years, RDI has achieved and maintained technological and commercial leadership worldwide by continually expanding and evolving its technology, products, markets and business infrastructure. The company's success is due in large part to RDI's involvement in several government sponsored R&D programs and partnerships that have resulted in substantial commercial sales. RDI currently designs, manufactures, sells and services a broad line of ADCP and Doppler Velocity Log (DVL) products that serve a wide range of government and private sector applications. The company currently earns over $20M in annual sales; employs 140 multi-disciplined scientists, engineers, technicians, sales, and support personnel; and operates offices in the United States, France and China. RDI's main business facility, located in San Diego, CA, is ISO 9001 certified, and includes 43,000 square feet of state-of-the art engineering, laboratory, manufacturing, and test areas.
RDI's most successful SBIR Phase III program was the commercialization of "BroadBand" ADCP technology developed under an ONR sponsored SBIR program. RDI commercialized the Phase II technology and developed a product line consisting of "Workhorse" BroadBand ADCPs for current pro file measurement and BroadBand DVLs for vessel velocity measurement in commercial and military markets. This technology utilizes wide-bandwidth pulse-coherent techniques to enable a factor of 50-100 improvement in measured velocity variance over existing technology. RDI funded this Phase III with retained earning from commercial product sales of existing ADCP products, which had been developed and commercialized from a previous government funded R&D program. Over $70M in commercial BroadBand ADCP & DVL product revenue has been realized over the past 10 years.
Broadband ADCP products are widely used by the DoD to measure physical properties of the ocean in regions of interest to the Navy. Vertical and horizontal distribution of ocean currents are measured from hull mounted units on Navy ships, and temporal variation of ocean currents are measured throughout the water column from fixed position moorings. Broadband DVL products are currently used as a precision velocity sensor for many Navy surface and subsurface vessels. Surface ship applications include Navy Mine Countermeasures (MCM) and Mine Hunting Countermeasures (MHC) ships. The sensor provides precision underwater navigation of Navy manned and Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUV), including: the SEAL Delivery Vehicle (SDV) and the SEAL divers in their near-shore hydrographic reconnaissance and mine counter measure missions; the REMUS Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) in its mine counter measure operations; the Long-term Mine Reconnaissance System (LMRS) UUV; and the AN/WLD-1 RMS Mine hunting ROV.
The key to the success of this SBIR Phase III commercialization was the company's specific intent to commercialize the resulting technology. From the outset, the R&D was targeted to the commercial marketplace, assessing commercial feasibility in Phase I, and developing the Phase II prototype based on commercial requirements. In addition to the sonar technology advancements, industry advancements in electronics were leveraged to achieve the cost, power and size reductions that the commercial market required. In carrying out Phase III, RDI had the benefits of the in-depth technical knowledge gained from Phase I & II, available funding, and the directly related commercial business experience and infrastructure required to commercialize, produce, market, internationally support the commercial products. The initial technological advantage afforded by this SBIR was extended to a long-term sustainable competitive advantage when U.S. and international patents for the BroadBand ADCP were approved.