OFG: Supports successful project combining AUV and USV mothership to survey the ocean’s depths
Ocean Floor Geophysics Inc. (OFG) works with the Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE GEBCO-NF Alumni Team to advance the state of the art in autonomous seafloor survey through operations support, expertise, and OFG’s HUGIN Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) Chercheur.
The GEBCO-NF Alumni Team has completed the Technology Readiness Tests of the Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE using a combined Unmanned Surface Vessel (USV) and Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) system. The goal of the XPRIZE challenge is to advance ocean technologies for rapid, unmanned and high-resolution ocean exploration and discovery.
This is a world first using the Hugin AUV and a USV mothership for launch, synchronized autonomous AUV survey operations, and recovery of the AUV back in to the USV. The project demonstrated that combined AUV and USV systems are a viable option for future offshore survey and inspection projects.
The Team chose to work together with OFG to integrate the HUGIN AUV Chercheur, in to the system. Chercheur is an industry-leading survey and pipeline inspection AUV equipped with a multibeam, camera, sub-bottom profiler, OFG Self Compensating Magnetometer (SCM), water chemistry sensors, and the HISAS 1032, a deep-water interferometric synthetic aperture sonar, that was used to collect bathymetric and imagery data for this project.
The USV SEA-KIT Maxlimer was designed by Hushcraft Ltd to act as a surface support vessel for the AUV, including the capacity to launch and recover the AUV and to provide subsea communications and positioning. SEA-KIT is a rugged, impact-safe and self-righting USV that can carry a deployable and retrievable payload of up to 2.5 tons. It has passive motion damping, a stable single-compartment flooding system and a self-deploying and stowing sea anchor to ease and ensure safe operations. The autonomous capabilities of the USV were provided by the K-Mate controller developed by Kongsberg Maritime and the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI).