Page 17: of Marine Technology Magazine (January 2021)

out Søgård, as CO2 starts to emerge as a balance sheet item E-ROV system) will continue, enabling un-vessel supervised and companies need a visible green pro? le. Operator strategies campaigns, while moves towards subsea residency continue to are focusing on emissions reduction, production and use of re- creep forward. Saipem’s Hydrone-R is set to be deployed at Equi- newables alongside and oil and gas, but also power from shore, nor’s Njord ? eld offshore Norway some time in 2021. Saipem says Chris Pearson, the UK’s National Subsea Centre director. says Hydrone-R can spend up to 12 months underwater, without being brought back to surface. Hydrone-W, it’s work class cous-

Expect more sensors, data, analytics in, is due to go through testing in 2021. Eelume, the snake robot,

In the technology domain, the world is potentially equally as is also due to be trialled at Åsgard, also in the Norwegian sector, agile. Lee Wilson, who co-founded new company Honuworx while Oceaneering’s Freedom vehicle is also set to be let loose in at the start of 2020, says we now need to learn from the likes the wild, likely on pipeline inspection operations. of Apple and Amazon and behave more like software com- “Whether the systems are hosted subsea or on the surface, panies, instead of sticking rigidly to a four-year technology having ‘eyes, ‘ears’ and even ‘hands’ on site remotely will roadmap and ? nding the world has changed at the end of it. help to increase asset uptime and potentially reduce the num-

So what does that involve? Expect there to be more sensors, ber of incidents through early identi? cation,” thinks Damian data and data analytics that will feed subsea robotics, automa- Ling, Geomatics Advisor at Chevron’s Energy Technology tion and remote hubs and cyber-physical systems, says Pearson. Company (ETC), while USVs will increase how much shal-

Some of that is already coming, not least around the use of low water inspection or host an AUV for deep water, without unmanned systems (UxV). In 2019-2020, unmanned surface using crewed vessels, he says. “I see both methods or services vessels (USVs), such as those from XOCEAN, were used for as complimentary to achieving the same goal,” he adds. survey and data harvesting type operations. In 2021, USVs that Increasing use of survey techniques adopted from terrestrial can deploy ROVs and AUVs will enter the market, including industries, such as photogrammetry, LiDAR, ? ducial land- the ? rst of the 21m and 36m-long Armada ? eet, being built by mark navigation and automatic target recognition, will also

Ocean In? nity, and Fugro’s SEA-KIT USVs; both of which help increase the ef? ciency of surveillance data collection will increase the scope of what can be done remotely. After the and “enable autonomous inspection methods and provide data ? rst vessels come out, more that can also deploy aerial drones will come – some- thing which will be of use in the offshore wind industry for blade inspection – but also bigger and more capable ROVs, in- cluding work class, for inspection, repair and maintenance and even geotechnical work, says Karl Daly, director, IRM ser- vices Europe, at Fugro, speaking at the recent joint IMCA, SUT, Hydrographic

Society in Scotland seminar. Instead of contracting a DP vessel, operators will be contracting for delivery of data, he says.

While initially there will have to be a hu- man in the loop for all operations, from the growing number of remote operations centres popping up, the future will move to one person overseeing two or even three vessels, says Mike King, business devel- opment manager at Ocean In? nity, also speaking at the online event. The vessels and what they do will also become more and more autonomous, says Daly, al- though this will have to be done in tandem with the development of regulatory policy around uncrewed marine operations.

Subsea residency

Deploying an ROV with batteries and communications buoy (i.e. Oceaneering’s

Fugro www.marinetechnologynews.com 17

MTR #1 (1-17).indd 17 1/25/2021 10:14:26 AM