Autonomous Vehicle Meets New Challenges Offshore
"PAIV"-ing the Way
by James Jamieson, Subsea 7 Ltd. Dr Ioseba Tena, SeeByte Ltd.
The Offshore industry has had to foster innovation in order to face the world's most challenging environments. But, innovation has not always been synonymous with industry wide acceptance. The introduction of the Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) only came about as the industry understood the possibilities that the new technology delivered. Through the years the spectrum of ROV tasks has steadily grown and today it is the workhorse of Subsea operations. But, the industry must now face new challenges as its rapid expansion into deeper water and harsher environments pushes resources and current technology to the limit. To meet this challenge new concepts of operations and novel solutions are required. Taking a leaf from the history of the ROV this article will present a new Autonomous Vehicle concept that will lead the way to new services and opportunities. This concept is the result of a program of work that has been partly sponsored to date by BP and Chevron. These oil majors have understood the possibilities and are working in collaboration with SeeByte and Subsea 7 to deliver a new service to the offshore industry. Subsea 7 a major engineering and construction company supplying a range of services and technologies primarily into the offshore oil and gas industries has its Remote Technology Group centred in Aberdeen (UK). The company operates a worldwide fleet of high specification subsea construction and survey vessels together with over 100 ROVs. Over the past 10 years Subsea 7 have been actively involved in the development of autonomous underwater technologies. SeeByte, Subsea 7's collaborative partner is a software
28 MTR
company with a track record in delivering solutions to both military and industry customers helping them automate and de-risk their processes. Through its involvement in key programs of work, SeeByte has been at the forefront of Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) development. In 2005 SeeByte demonstrated a prototype autonomous riser tracking system for AUVs. The system used a sonar to identify and track the riser and guide the AUV. In 2006 SeeByte's Autotracker [1] software and Subsea 7's Geosub AUV were used in conjunction to carry out the world longest un-interrupted AUV inspection run of a pipeline, a total of 22.2 km running at four knots. SeeByte also supplies the U.S. Navy with SeeTrack COIN (Common Operator Interface for the Navy) a software solution that allows the US Navy to plan missions, analyse and display data from underwater and airborne sensors, and to integrate VSW MCM (Very Shallow Water Mine Counter Measures) with global command and control systems. This article presents a joint initiative by Subsea 7 and SeeByte to develop the next generation AUV for the offshore O&G industry, to see the development of the first truly autonomous vehicle capable of both inspection and light intervention in an offshore environment. SeeByte will provide the autonomous behaviour and control software to match the vehicle engineering, intervention systems and operational experience of Subsea 7.
Vision
As offshore O&G exploration and production has evolved over the last decades more and more infrastructure is being installed on the seabed, of increasing comApril 2009
You don't have Macromedia Flash Player installed.
This content requires the Macromedia Flash Player.
Get Flash
es.marinelink.mobi
www.marinelink.com