Page 38: of Marine Technology Magazine (May 2020)

FEATURE Vehicles/IMR

For tracking pipelines, the team at a nearby pipeline to the cage.” The AUV ried out in 2018, in the Arthit feld, in

HiveGround has developed a Robot further locates the cage using the two the Gulf of Thailand – just two years

Operating System (ROS) based naviga- WSM 6+ beacons, as well as Alvar AR after the project team was launched. tion software to locate an actual pipe- tag machine vision markers for orienta- The Xplorer engineering team, con- line which has a small offset from the tion. This makes deployment and recov- sisting of ARV and HiveGround, then

CAD drawing. The software has an AI ery faster and saves the vehicle battery, performed a further two offshore tri- module that processes real-time multi- says Sompol, taking just 15 minutes to als of its fully integrated AUV in July beam data to output a pipeline position, get from seabed to deck. and November last year. Both trials had then the AUV path can be calculated In an emergency, the vehicle is pro- technical support from Sonardyne en- following the pipeline to accomplish grammed to drop a weight and foat to gineers – another beneft of going to the the mission. the surface where it would report its po- same company for a suite of navigation ”When we drop the cage down to the sition via satellite communications for and positioning systems. seabed, we drop it about 20 m away from up to 45 days. If it is not safe to surface The latest trials, in November 2019, the pipeline and from there it will auto- it could move to the bottom and use the also in the Arthit feld, saw the 500 kg, matically start searching for the pipe- AvTrak 6 as a relocation beacon for 30 2.4 m-long, 1.3 m-wide and 53 cm-tall line and then tracking it up to the plat- days, he adds. untethered AUV deploy from its cage form riser base and then fy back,” says and successfully fnd its way back into

Sompol. “After it has done its mission, the cage, says Sompol. It was also tested in-w Ater triALs we can send a command via the USBL for obstacle avoidance and automatic

Following pool testing of various sen- path generation at two pipeline crossing to the AvTrak 6 to tell the AUV to fnd sor and navigation packages and sys- points. The vehicle also performed semi- its cage. It will then start moving from tems, initial offshore trials were car- May 2020 38

MTR