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www.seadiscovery.com Marine Technology Reporter 35 high speed WiFi link. This successful demonstration of technology to an industry audience has shown we now have the capability and development program required to offer a new solution currently unavailable to the market in the Life of Field sector.

Summary

Subsea 7 and SeeByte have a worldwide reputation for the development and implementation of remote technol- ogy systems for the subsea oil and gas industry. This was demonstrated by the execution of the world's first use of an Autonomous Vehicle on a pipeline inspection project for BP in the West of Shetlands region of the UK. This success has been followed by the development of a hover- ing Autonomous Vehicle concept, targeted to perform numerous activities from a host facility throughout the life of a subsea offshore development.

The ability to operate directly from the host facility pro- vides significant advantages as routine inspections can be easily and frequently carried out without having to call in a dedicated support vessel. The Prototype Autonomous

Inspection Vehicle is used to qualify and demonstrate the technologies to be embedded in the final vehicle design.

With the support of BP and Chevron, the initial phase of this development has been successfully completed, culmi- nating in a water tank demonstration that showcased the potential of the tech- nology. This paper has described con- cepts, the approach to de-risking and cur- rent status of the project. It is intended to provide a clear insight into the viability of this game changing technology which our collaborative efforts will deliver to the global subsea market. (This paper was originally presented at the Deep Offshore Technology

Conference 2009)

About the Authors

James Jamieson, BSc, IET

Jamieson is an Engineering Manager in the remote technology group of Subsea 7.

Based in Aberdeen, Scotland he has been actively involved in the design of control systems for Subsea 7’s world wide fleet of remotely operated vehicles and tooling systems. With more than twenty years experience in this field, he has spent the last five years leading Subsea 7’s AUV development work.

Dr. Ioseba Tena

Tena is SeeByte's Sales Manager. Ioseba is SeeByte's Sales

Manager, and is responsible for the development of

SeeByte's overall commercial strategies and managing the marketing sales process within the company. He supervis- es a team with a global outreach with existing customers in the continents of America, Australia and Europe. Ioseba has been developing technical solutions for the offshore industry for more than 10 years.

References [1] P Patrón, J Evans, J Brydon, J Jamieson, "AUTOTRACKER,

Autonomous Pipeline Inspection Sea Trials 2005" [2] Thomas S. Chance, CEO, C & C Technologies, Inc.; AUV

Experiences: Discoveries and Lessons Learned [3] Hamilton K. and Evans J., "Subsea pilotless inspection using an autonomous underwater vehicle (SPINAV): concepts and results", Proc.

Oceans 2005 - Europe, Volume 2, Issue 20-23 June 2005 Page(s): 775- 781 [4] G Griffiths, J Jamieson, S Mitchell., "Energy storage for long endurance AUVs" [5] Evans J., et al, "Autonomous Docking for Intervention-AUVs using

Sonar and Video-based Real-Time 3D pose estimation", Proc. of the 13th International Symposium on Unmanned Untethered Submersible

Technology (UUST), New Hampshire, USA, Aug 2003.

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