AUVs and ROVs: Supporting Offshore Renewable Technologies

Abstract

Abstract The presentation will show how Bluefin Robotics' capabilities in the ROV and AUV space provide effective survey, observation and light-work technologies that will support marine renewable technologies markets by enabling a wide variety of both broad area survey and underwater intervention tasks in the high-current, low-visibility environments associated with marine renewable installations. In addition, the ROVs and AUVs provide a cost-effective footprint, low infrastructure support and operational flexibility. Installation of marine renewable energy structures such as offshore wind turbines and marine hydrokinetic devices will require a variety of visualization and monitoring equipment to properly survey the sea floor for initial installation, cable lay, and post-installation, monitoring, and maintenance tasks. Such activities can be challenging due to the shallow water environments where these installations are located, with high ocean currents and tides necessitating remote systems that can execute station-keeping in water flows above five knots. In addition, the visibility is such that traditional optical solutions such as divers or cameras are not feasible, necessitating forward-looking sonars, laser imaging or similar tools. Bluefin Robotics recently acquired Hawkes Remotes, Inc. (HRI), a spinoff of Hawkes Ocean Technologies that develops advanced Remote Operated Vehicles (ROVs). The Hawkes ROV designs offer scalable, modular solutions including a thin, armored fiber-optic tether and on-board high-energy-density batteries that will reduce the total cost of ownership and operating costs while simultaneously outperforming existing ROV technology. The rollout vehicle is the U-4000, a hydrodynamic light-work-class ROV designed for the inspection, repair and maintenance (IRM) market and capable of speeds of two to six knots. Bluefin is leveraging their autonomy and subsea experience to add hybrid capabilities to the Hawkes ROVs and offer them as an extension of their current autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) product line. AUVs and ROVs fill different niches within the underwater intervention task spectrum: while workclass ROVs such as the Hawkes vehicles can provide inspection, repair and maintenance capabilities in high-current environments, AUVs provide the capability for subsea inspection and survey on a variety of range scales and with multiple sensors, including sidescan and synthetic aperture sonar, sub-bottom profiling, multi-beam echosounding, and still and video photography.