hydrographic survey 13
AUV supports environmental
monitoring, wide area surveys
Carl-Marcus Remén reports on a new
generation of autonomous underwater
vehicles in the international oil and gas
market.
S
aab has been developing advanced
autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs)
and remotely operated vehicles (ROVs)
and for more than 30 years. Development
of underwater vehicles from Saab has been done in a
modular and evolutionary way to create a flexible solution
to fit different domains and customers. An important
strategy for the development of these modular vehicles
has been to minimise life cycle and ILS costs for the
customer. And now the company has just launched a
new generation of AUVs to the international oil and gas
market the AUV 62.
Configurable design
The AUV 62 has been in operation since 2002 mainly in
the defence sector as a mine detection and surveillance
vehicle but has now added functions that could benefit
Fig. 2. AUV62 Ready to be launched for survey mission
many operations connected to the oil and gas domain.
in Australia.
The AUV 62 uses an easily configurable design which
will give operators a whole new way to handle AUV autonomous reconnaissance over vast areas, to be used
operations. in various scenarios thanks to the modularity of this AUV.
The AUV 62 can be equipped with sensors for Equipped with suitable sensor module the AUV 62 can
reconnaissance, environmental monitoring and be used to support operations such as:
surveillance. The system is designed for long range
l Mapping an area prior to deploying pipelines and
other seabed installations.
l Detect, track and inspect various underwater
installations.
l Environmental monitoring.
This vehicle has even helped in Search and Rescue
(SAR) operations finding lost bodies and equipment.
The basic module, used for all AUV 62 configurations,
is equipped with an electrical propulsion system including
systems for navigation, communication and vehicle
control.
For geographical location tracking the vehicle
utilises multiple information sources, such as inertial
measurement systems, GPS, Doppler velocity log and
terrain aided navigation.
To stabilise the vehicle in the water volume and handle
depth-dependent temperature and salinity variations
the AUV 62 are equipped with ballast modules enabling
Fig. 1. AUV159.JPG. The AUV 62 is a fully modular AUV for automatic control of the weight and centre of gravity of
environmental monitoring and wide area surveys for the offshore the AUV body, particularly at low speeds.
market. During or after runs, the system can be used to
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