Page 8: of Marine Technology Magazine (September 2021)

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ARV-i: Box? sh Research & Transmark Subsea

Box? sh Research and Transmark Sub- weight ratio and enabling extended ex- sea signed a partnership agreement in cursion time and range.

October 2020 to deliver a fully autono- The ARV-i can carry a range of sensors mous resident observation ROV, the to monitor underwater assets and assist

ARV-i. The ARV-i combines underwa- in navigation.

ter vehicle, photography and robotics ARV-i can also be manually piloted us- technology from Box? sh Research and ing live video or via a digital twin of the underwater power and communications environment, enabled by high-speed op- from Transmark Subsea. The goal is for tical and acoustic communications be- it to be able to spend up to 12 months tween the dock and the vehicle. Piloting per deployment underwater, based out of the ROV away from and back to its of a subsea docking station with battery Anderson of Box? sh Research. “Addi- offshore dock may be performed from charging, with wireless communication tional proprietary arti? cial intelligence distant, land-based locations.

of data during dive excursions. Every onboard enables the ARV-i to optimize The ARV-i is also available as a teth- 12 months, it would be exchanged with movements within its environment.” ered solution, adds Anderson, in con- a replacement and the original refur- junction with a subsea tether manage-

Anderson says the vehicle has an ar- bished. ray of up to six machine vision cameras ment system. Up to 8K / 50MP camera “In resident mode, ARV-i can be fully and one live 4K navigation camera, and systems are be supported in the ARV-i autonomous with its self-piloting sys- it can deliver 17,000 lumens of lighting tethered solution tems taking advantage of the existing for high quality observation underwater.

Box? sh’s ARV-i prototype successful-

Box? sh ROV platform, such as the ad- The vehicle weighs only 25kg, making ly completed trials in May 2021. Sea tri- vanced stability and maneuverability deployment and entry to con? ned spaces als are now underway, with of? cial mar- of its eight-thruster design,” says Craig easier, while maximizing the power-to- ket release scheduled for October 2021.

Saipem SpA www.saipem.com partnership of Senai Cimatec and DFKI, funded by EMBRA-

PII and by Shell through a four years ANP R&D program.

Saipem is enhancing the FlatFish features with capabilities for pipeline autonomous tracking and inspection, risers in- spection, data harvesting from IoT subsea sensors, contact- less monitoring of cathodic protection systems and a ? ying- hanging garage for the launching/recovering and subsea recharging/reprogramming. During the ? rst period of open water tests, several functionalities have been assessed, both in remote and in autonomous operative mode, and others will be tested in the next months until early 2022: navigation capabil- ities, autonomous and remote controlled, wired and wireless

Headquartered in San Donato Milanese (Milan), Italy, (by means of optical link); communication, both acoustic and

Saipem is an advanced technological and engineering platform optical; subsea docking/undocking on the resident HyBase for the design, construction and operation of complex, safe and on the Flying Garage for recharge and data exchange; and sustainable infrastructures and plants. Led by Francesco autonomous missions, such as way to point with multiple

Caio with 32,000 employees worldwide, Saipem is committed targets, collision avoidance and obstacle avoidance, horizon- to supporting its clients on the frontier of the energy transition tal and vertical pipe following and feature recognitions (by with assets, technologies and processes that are increasingly means of visual markers), depth map to develop 3D recon- digital and oriented towards environmental sustainability. struction and advanced feature recognition, data harvesting

The FlatFish is a resident and fully autonomous vehicle able from subsea seismic on-bottom nodes; and subsea exchange to autonomously perform complex subsea inspection tasks. and operation of payload module (CP skid) for contactless CP

The FlatFish program was started by Shell in 2013 with the measurement of pipelines and ? xed structures.

8 September/October 2021

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