Energy Digital: 5 new advancements in AUV technology for oil and gas
The oil and gas industry was introduced to autonomous underwater vehicles about 10 years ago for use in mapping out the details of the seafloor prior to constructing subsea infrastructure.
New advancements are expanding their uses.
Mapping the ocean floor
C & C Technologies created the first ever commercially operated AUV for oil and gas exploration. The company caters to a global market and focuses on technological solutions for surveying and mapping. C & C claims to have set the standard as far as deepwater AUV capabilities. Data is captured and processed onboard the AUV, and the charts are transferred via satellite to a website, ensuring oil and gas clients gain access to data immediately.
A press release issued by C & C stated: “[The AUV] could help oil companies save a great deal of time and money when conducting ocean-bottom surveys of the sort that precede the construction of oil and natural gas pipelines. Moreover, it could scan the sea floor at much greater depths than previously thought possible.”
Before the development of AUVs, oil and gas companies used a towing method, in which equipment is tethered to a cable and dropped into the water from a boat, which then moves around, ‘towing’ the equipment. A downside to this method is that as the water becomes deeper, the images appear less sharp, less precise. AUVs are also less disruptive to the ocean floor and its inhabitants.
Operating longer
The Swimmer system developed by Cybernetix is an electric-powered hybrid of an autonomous underwater vehicle and a remotely operated vehicle (ROV). A subsea “docking station” essentially allows the vehicle to stay underwater for lengthy periods of time, and is attached to a facility on the surface by a power and control ‘umbilical.’ This tool was developed collaboratively with oil companies, Total and StatoilHydro.
Ability to inspect and repair infrastructures
Last year the software company SeeByte, working along with Subsea 7, developed: “the first truly autonomous vehicle capable of both inspection and light intervention in an offshore environment.” This prototype was supported by BP and Chevron, and will be capable of inspecting pipelines, risers and mooring, as well as giving a general visual inspection.
Automated guidance systems
SeeByte also developed Autotracker—a software system in which an AUV can find pipes for inspections by utilizing data from sonar. “Autotracker, which hit the market last year, guides the AUV to keep a constant offset to the pipeline in order to store high quality information. From the start, one of our missions has been to improve AUVs so that they could start doing things that ROVs are used for,” said sales and marketing manager Ioseba Tena.
Power by renewable energy
A more recent advancement is the introduction of the first robotic underwater vehicle powered 100 percent by natural, renewable ocean-thermal energy. NASA, the U.S. Navy and researchers from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego developed the Sounding Oceanographic Lagrangrian Observer Thermal RECharging (SOLO-TREC), an AUV with a novel thermal recharging engine that can be powered by different temperatures at various ocean depths.
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