Page 25: of Marine Technology Magazine (March 2007)

many vehicles and students on their way to operational success. When asked MTR on recent activities in the

AUV community, he readily rattled off a dizzying list of institutions, companies and different factions of the U.S.

Navy. In all, he said, there are more than 100 different

AUVs currently being developed within various agencies and research institutions, with just a handful available commercially. He also said that there are significant R&D and operational AUV efforts underway in the U.K.,

France, China and Russia, to name a few in the interna- tional engineering community.

The list of companies that offer AUVs include, but is not limited to: Hydroid, Bluefin Robotics, Prism, Ocean

Server, International Submarine Engineering, Lockheed

Martin, BAE Systems, Falmouth Scientific, Kongsberg

Marine and Hafmynd.

AUVs in the Real World

The fact that the U.S. Navy and NOAA are evaluating and seriously considering fleets of AUVs, and the devel- opment of increasing AUV use in the offshore market are sure signs that the technology is finally maturing after 20 years of development, reaching the point where the vehi- cles offer a desirable dependability and cost effectiveness.

C&C Technologies, a large survey company, is using the

Kongsberg Hugin AUV to conduct deep water high reso- lution geophysical surveys for offshore oil and gas indus- try all over the world. C&C owns four Hugin AUVs (Sea

Survey 1,2,3,4) that are equipped Edgetech chirp side scan sonars and sub bottom transducers. Sea Survey 3 and 4 also have the Edgetech dynamically focused sonar on board to improve survey resolution. Jay Northcutt,

Director of Geophysical Operations for C&C, said that running the Sea Survey AUVs is no simple task, requir- ing trained operators and software engineers to keep track of the system and the resulting data. The advantage of using the deep water system is that it omits the need for a second vessel, there is no huge winch and cable handling system that is used when towing a vehicle and the AUV can change direction within minutes as opposed to the www.seadiscovery.com Marine Technology Reporter 25 nstream

C&C Technologies' HUGIN Sea Survey AUV being deployed off ship.

MTR#2 (17-32).qxd 3/2/2007 11:07 AM Page 25