Aberdeen Evening Meeting – Autonomous Underwater Vehicles – Operational experience and the future

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) have been gradually gaining a foothold in the offshore industry over the last 20 years, principally for survey operations.  They have recently gained a higher public profile with the coverage of the search for MH 370.  The AUV is ready for the industry, but is the industry ready for the AUV!  The presentations for the evening will introduce different AUVs their capabilities, applications and benefits over traditional methods, before looking at the operator’s perspective and experiences.  The evening will finish with a view of the future where AUVs are being deployed in full autonomous mode for IRM activities.

Report

Chairman – Damian Ling, Chevron Subsea Survey Team

Operational experience with the Gavia AUVs – click here for presentation
Simon Goldsworthy, Business Development Manager, NCS Survey Limited
NCS Survey was the first survey provider utilizing Gavia AUVs for commercial survey and have been successfully using them for a variety of tasks since 2009. The talk will discuss experiences with Gavia AUVs including system overview, current capabilities, recent developments and planned future enhancements

Operational Experience with the Hugin AUV – click here for presentation
Andy Docherty, Offshore AUV Manager, DOF
The presentation will be focus on DOF experience operating the Hugin AUV, beginning with the history of their involvement, followed by a section on  current operations and how projects are executed. The final section will look forward to DOF’s expansion plans and a few lessons learned over the years.

An overview of operational lessons from pipeline landfall inspections with a ‘low logistics’ AUV
Jonathan Mueller-Wiesner, Subsea Operations Engineer, BP North Sea Ops Subsea & Pipelines
The presentation provides an overview of lessons learned from the most recent landfall inspections (2013) conducted with a small AUV in North East Scotland and Shetland. Focus will be on the operability of AUVs in a subsea execution framework and the readiness of AUVs as a standard subsea inspection tool. Whilst the overall job was considered a success, many lessons were identified, which would require resolution. Lessons and discussion points include: mission equipment assurance, mobilisation, launch, recovery and reliability.

Autonomous Inspection Vehicle (AIV)
Jim Jamieson, Technology Manager / Life of Field, Subsea 7
Innovation is a core value of Subsea 7, to improve the efficiency of our business, operations and service. The development of the Autonomous Inspection Vehicle (AIV) is a technology driven program that underlines this core value. The presentation will comment on the general trends in autonomous underwater vehicle technology, the challenge of autonomous IRM and outline the AIV technology development. An overview of the Mk1 AIV, a hovering inspection vehicle, its capability and how it can be deployed will be discussed. The presentation will conclude with a comment on the future of autonomous technology and how it might be applied to the underwater environment.

SUT Aberdeen Branch Event Sponsors 2014/15

http://www.fugrosubsea.co.uk
http://www.ge-energy.com/about/oil_and_gas.jsp
http://www.kdmarine.com
http://www.nautronix.com
http://www.onesubsea.com
http://www.technip.com/en
http://www.woodgroupkenny.com