The Future of Uncrewed Force Multipliers

As the offshore energy industry looks for ways to reduce environmental footprints and offer safer, more operationally efficient, and cost-effective services, the industry will look toward uncrewed solutions to light the path forward.

Uncrewed Surface Vessels (USVs) can complement offshore survey work by eliminating or reducing the need for larger multi-service vessels, and crews to staff them, to stay on site while subsea work is carried out with remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) and Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs).

FORCE MULTIPLIER

Oceaneering is a leader in remote operations, having established its first dedicated Onshore Remote Operations Center (OROC) in 2015 in Stavanger, Norway, and has achieved over 100,000 hours of piloting from shore. In addition to this, Oceaneering has pioneered Remotely Operated Survey since 2016, helping to transition over 9,000 personnel days from the field through the use of innovative technologies to enable secure data transmission to shore.

At Offshore Europe 2023, Oceaneering announced that it will add a DriX USV from Exail to its fleet. The new vessel will be used to complete offshore survey and inspection work scopes, enabling us to improve operational efficiencies, reduce overall vessel time on site, and significantly reduce carbon emissions for customers.

The DriX USV will work in conjunction with Oceaneering’s existing assets and services to expand capabilities, with the first use case detailed to support deepwater geophysical surveys and asset inspection scopes. The USV introduces a force multiplier when performing survey scopes in tandem with Oceaneering’s AUVs, such as HUGINs and hybrid Freedom™ ROV/AUV vehicle system.

By operating in conjunction with Freedom, the USV will provide a collaborative robotics solution for our customers that helps reduce the carbon footprint of operations. When using the USV and Freedom together, we can use the USV as a tracking and communication tool, a function traditionally provided by a large, crewed vessel. However, by using the highly capable USV, the mother vessel is released to carry out concurrent work scopes in the local vicinity, such as geophysical, seismic, and geotechnical surveys or ROV-based asset inspection, repair, and maintenance (IMR). By freeing up the project’s multi-service vessel, we can drive operational efficiencies, and complete work scopes faster.

FIELD-PROVEN USV

The DriX USV has accumulated several thousand hours in operation since entering service in 2016 and is able to conduct over-the-horizon supervised autonomous operations thanks to its AI-powered CortiX software and state-of-the-art sensors.

The USV's shape and stability allows for continued operations alongside Oceaneering’s AUVs in poor sea conditions (up to sea state 5), without compromising the system’s ability to capture high quality data.

The USV's speed and endurance also reduces transit downtime and enables high-speed, nearshore surveys to be conducted while obtaining optimal data quality, harvested in a fraction of the usual time. It offers a lower environmental footprint at only two liters of fuel usage per hour, a massive carbon emissions savings when compared with the output of a crewed vessel.

DUAL REDUNDANCY

Our service will offer the industry’s first USV equipped with true, dual positional redundancy for guaranteed continuity of service. Oceaneering’s USV service offering will utilize dual independent positioning correction services from Oceaneering’s C-NAV^® group for uninterrupted operations, thereby improving reliability.

Launched earlier in 2023, C-NAV^® LEO, a Satellite-based Correction Service, is delivered exclusively through the Iridium^® Short Burst Data^® service. Iridium offers truly global coverage, with 66 satellites in six polar orbits, nine in-orbit spares, and six ground spares. Iridium satellites work even in adverse weather conditions, moving quickly so any blockage in coverage is temporary and leaving correction accuracy unaffected.

FUTURE PLANS

Adding a USV to Oceaneering’s fleet is a natural progression of our remote operations expertise and will drive significant opportunities to scale operations and drive greater efficiencies and supports our IMR growth strategies.

The DriX USV allows us to remotely gather high-quality data at a lower operational impact, without the need for dedicated offshore crew, thereby reducing health and safety risks to personnel and the environment.

We see the USV service expanding over time to support cost-effective growth in the offshore renewables market, enabling the towing of sensors from larger USVs while providing a platform for deploying ROVs remotely.

Overall, the USV service will make it more efficient for our customers to complete AUV inspection and survey scopes that are combined with conventional survey, asset inspection, or remediation and reduce the risk of downtime associated with weather conditions.

This story was originally featured in ON&T Special Edition 2023. Click here to read more.