Role & capabilities
- Underwater survey
- Environmental assessment
- Primary domain
- Underwater
- System type
- Autonomous underwater vehicle
- Developer / manufacturer
- Cellula Robotics
- Origin / production countries
- Canada
- Other names
- Solus-XR; Solus XR
- Variants / configurations
- Guardian fuel-cell configuration; Guardian battery configuration
- Operators / programme customers
- Confidential defence customer — announced 2025 sale
Evidence & current status
Rename established. Current supplier endurance wording conflicts internally; customer identity, acceptance and a full-range demonstration are unresolved.
Guardian is explicitly identified by Cellula as the platform previously called Solus-XR. It is a large autonomous underwater vehicle with interchangeable payload spaces and alternative battery or fuel-cell energy configurations. The available equipment is intended for survey, infrastructure assessment and defence-related sensing, with customer-specific integrations remaining separate from the base vehicle.
Cellula's 2025 news register records a sale to a confidential defence customer. That supports a procurement milestone but cannot establish the customer's country, fleet size or operational acceptance. Earlier Solus-XR material records Canadian maritime-autonomy compliance and trials; those are programme-development milestones rather than proof of the full advertised performance envelope.
The current product page illustrates why careful qualification matters. Its headline describes over 45 days of endurance, while the fuel-cell specification table lists 925 hours, or approximately 38.5 days. This record uses the labelled table and retains the inconsistency rather than resolving it by assumption. The advertised 5,000-kilometre range is also kept separate from Envoy's documented 2026 demonstration. Similar names and shared technology do not justify transferring one vehicle's test result to the other.
Sourced specifications
Figures apply to the named configuration. Maximum values are not guaranteed operating performance.
| Specification | Reported value | Context & source |
|---|---|---|
| Configuration | Not established in the reviewed public sources. | Public evidence gap. No estimate or neighbouring variant value has been substituted. Source ↗ |
| Hull / propulsion | Fuel-cell or rechargeable lithium-ion energy options | Supplier baseline; installed equipment and operating conditions affect performance. Source ↗ |
| Dimensions | 11.7 m long; 1.66 m width/height | Supplier baseline; installed equipment and operating conditions affect performance. Source ↗ |
| Displacement / mass | Fuel-cell table: 8,000 kg | Supplier baseline; installed equipment and operating conditions affect performance. Source ↗ |
| Payload | Not established in the reviewed public sources. | Public evidence gap. No estimate or neighbouring variant value has been substituted. Source ↗ |
| Endurance | Fuel-cell table: 925 hours (38.5 days); battery table: 480 hours | Headline claims over 45 days; selected table figures are supplier specifications, not demonstrated results. Source ↗ |
| Range | Fuel-cell table: 5,000 km; battery table: 2,650 km | Advertised configuration figures; not verified by the separate Envoy demonstration. Source ↗ |
| Speed | Not established in the reviewed public sources. | Public evidence gap. No estimate or neighbouring variant value has been substituted. Source ↗ |
| Operating depth | 300 / 1,000 / 3,000 m configurations offered | Supplier baseline; installed equipment and operating conditions affect performance. Source ↗ |
| Sensors | Not established in the reviewed public sources. | Public evidence gap. No estimate or neighbouring variant value has been substituted. Source ↗ |
| Communications / control | Not established in the reviewed public sources. | Public evidence gap. No estimate or neighbouring variant value has been substituted. Source ↗ |
| Launch / deployment | Not established in the reviewed public sources. | Public evidence gap. No estimate or neighbouring variant value has been substituted. Source ↗ |
Publication history
- — Added in the September 2026 global coverage review, with sources, configuration limits and explicit data gaps.
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Follow the evidence
Source types identify who makes the claim. Programme milestones and supplier statements should be read in context.