Page 52: of Marine Technology Magazine (May 2022)

Tech Feature

Innovative new products, technologies and concepts ing magnetic ? elds for localizing the underwater robot. shell for planned and unplanned maintenance processes, such as the isolation valve of a subsea structure. The SAP Intel-

Robust Thrusters ligent Asset Management cloud application can now initiate

WITTENSTEIN cyber motor GmbH developed and pro- such maintenance via the isolation valve’s management shell duced the highly robust thruster drives for the AUV’s locomo- and receive execution status back from the underwater robot. tion. These have a thrust of up to 500 newtons, are protected Thanks to the management shell, any other systems from oth- against seawater and are suitable for water depths of up to er parties can be added or replaced by others without much 6000 meters. No liquid ? llers were used in the manufacturing integration effort. process, which employed special potting technologies to avert In the project, the ROSEN Group, a leading global provider chemical hazards to the environment. The servo inverters that of integrity management solutions for large-scale industrial go with the thrusters include sensorless control speci? cally plants in the energy industry, developed four different mea- matched to the thruster motor, providing accurate, highly dy- surement technologies for AUVs to check the condition of namic speed control over the entire speed range up to stand- various subsea structures: Magnetic ? eld sensors to detect still in both directions of rotation. The AUV is equipped with ferromagnetic structures, sensors to measure electric ? elds of eight such thruster drives, which in the overall network enable cathodic protection systems, and ultrasonic and eddy current highly precise movements as required for docking with under- sensors to measure local wall thicknesses using manipulators water structures. The real-time communication required for on the AUV. In addition, a communication buoy was devel- this is carried out within the AUV using EtherNet/IP. oped to ensure data transmission from the robot through the

In Mare-IT, SAP investigated how and under what condi- water column to the central control station. ROSEN has suc- tions autonomous systems such as AUVs can be integrated cessfully completed all four measurement technologies for into IT infrastructures such as cloud systems. For this pur- use on the AUV, making an important contribution to autono- pose, a vendor-independent integration of digital twins into mous underwater applications of complex sensor systems.

business applications was realized by developing the manage- The Mare-IT project was funded from August 1, 2018, to ment shell, a central component of the Industry 4.0 reference November 30, 2021, by the Project Management Agency for architecture. The management shell ensures interoperability Software Systems and Knowledge Technologies of the Ger- across solutions from any manufacturer. It reduces integration man Aerospace Center (DLR) with funding from the Federal costs and efforts, especially if several organizations are to ac- Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) of around 5.5 cess data of digital twins. SAP prototyped the management million euros.

T T T T T The AUV i in driving p position with m manipulators f fo f f lded.

Copyright for all photos is DFKI, Thomas Frank 52 May/June 2022

MTR #4 (50-63).indd 52 4/28/2022 9:13:50 AM