Page 35: of Marine Technology Magazine (May 2020)

young but ambitious team from Thailand are hoping to make pipeline inspection

A both easier and more cost effcient with a new autonomous under- water vehicle (AUV) they have designed from scratch. The team, part of un- manned vehicle system company HiveG- round, has been working on the system for three years under a project initiated by a tech spin-off company AI & Robot- ics Ventures (ARV), a wholly subsidiary of Thailand’s national petroleum com- pany PTT Exploration and Production (PTTEP), with support from Depart- ment of Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Kasetsart University, also in Thailand. Following prototype testing last year [2019], an upgraded model called Xplorer AUV will soon be launched as ARV and HiveGround start to eye commercial projects.

Sompol Suntharasantic, an electri- cal engineer at HiveGround, says, “We want to build an AUV that you can drop into the Gulf of Thailand to col- lect electric feld gradient (EFG) data for cathodic protection assessments on the pipelines and video and multibeam data of the terrain around the pipelines, to check for free-spans, etc. Our goal is to cover all of the pipelines in the Gulf of Thailand before looking for bigger opportunities.” A key element of the system is its navigation and positioning suite from Sonardyne International Ltd., but more on that later.

Doing more with Less

The Gulf of Thailand runs along the eastern coast of Thailand with Cambo- dia to the north. In these waters, PTTEP operates more than 400 platforms and about 1,000 km of pipeline, in about 75 m water depth. Many of the pipelines stretch just 3-5 km between facilities, but some go out as far as 50 km. Surveying all of that subsea infrastructure currently involves deploying a tethered remotely operated vehicle (ROV) from a Class 2

Photo: Sonardyne International www.marinetechnologynews.com

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