Robotic submarines, capable of operating by themselves thousands of feet underwater for months or perhaps years at a time, are under development as the vanguard of tomorrow’s subsea oil and gas fields. This development comes as the offshore oil and gas industry moves into ever-deeper waters and remote areas of the world, where installing a floating production facility is either economically unjustifiable or infeasible. The industry’s solution is to install production equipment on the seafloor, where someone, or something, must keep a close eye on all of it. That something is likely to be what are known as field resident autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). Nonresident AUVs have already paved the way by proving they can carry out detailed inspections of platforms and pipelines in some cases four times faster than a human-piloted remotely operated vehicle (ROV). Two of the leading companies in the resident AUV business, Lockheed Martin and Saab Seaeye, are blending proven military technology with new software and hardware optimized for the offshore industry. Their emerging systems represent a new breed of subsea robots that will be capable of much more than earlier generations of autonomous systems. As their capabilities are realized, resident AUVs will eventually be assigned many of the same tasks that ROVs are carrying out today. To achieve that end, offshore operators are working with manufacturers to identify how best to fully deploy this emerging technology. Much of the groundwork is being laid through DeepStar, a research and development consortium that counts 11 operating companies as members. “We are already using AUVs for certain functions on a sporadic basis, but we’re trying to understand, as operators, what else this technology can do reliably,” said Greg Kusinski, DeepStar director and Chevron senior advisor to DeepStar. DeepStar’s primary goal is to accelerate the development and adoption of AUV technology by drafting interface standards, similar to the standards already developed for ROVs. Among the interface issues yet to be resolved is how resident AUVs will connect to life support systems in a subsea field. Because resident AUVs will have to remain submerged for months to possibly years at a time, the docking station is a critical piece of equipment that will charge up the AUV and upload its data to the operator’s server by a subsea Internet connection. Once the particulars of the docking station are understood, Kusinski said careful consideration must be given to other issues, such as where to place it among the subsea infrastructure. “There are a lot of questions of that nature,” he said. “As responsible operators, we are addressing these issues in a very systematic and methodical manner. I don’t think anyone is interested in putting a bunch of them down there and just seeing what happens.” DeepStar expects to conclude its AUV study on interfaces in about a year and will deliver its recommended best practices to the American Petroleum Institute for review.