Moderated by: Anne Britt Høydal, DNV and Bjørn Kahrs, Norwegian Energy Partners

17:00 - 17:20

Untethered resident ROV: from wireless control to full automation in six months
Mark Bokenfohr - Transmark Subsea 

The ARV-i resident underwater drone has been developed through collaboration between team members located in four different countries, some on opposite ends of the globe. Transmark Subsea shares the story of the challenges that needed to be overcome on the road to success, showing how and why the solution pivoted, providing insight into the development process that has led to successful in-water deployment and operation of our resident tetherless drone.

The ARV-i is a small, light (30kg), cost-effective vehicle for inspection, data harvesting, and light tooling that sees first use in the aquaculture sector. Pinless underwater connectors are at the heart of the solution, and the origin of ARV-i development. We intend this untethered wireless charging and data transfer platform to provide the means to un-cable underwater infrastructure. We will also share our vision for universal ocean access from any location globally, persistently, 24/7. 

17:20 - 17:40

Autonomous Subsea Drones - digital integration
Jan Christian Torvestad - Equinor 

As autonomous drones are steadily approaching industrial realization, supportive infrastructure is needed to achieve full digital integration. There will always be an element of communication despite advances in autonomy gradually unlocks new vessel-less tasks.

There is a need for the drone to connect to the world.

Seamless digital integration of drones and robots will enhance the potential of these emerging technologies.

So - what lies behind the buzzword “digital integration” in this context?

In short it is the bring-your-own-drone infrastructure that enables efficient and fully streamlined communication between the wireless subsea vehicle and the onshore cloud. It is a concept for how to merge flexible mainstream IoT trends, cyber security, and subsea infrastructure. The concept also describes a possible path to standardization such as OPC-UA.

The presentation will touch into several on-going initiatives and the grand plan on how it all is intended to be tied together and eventually implemented. The digital integration strategy and principles presented is open and can be adopted beyond Equinor.

17:40 - 18:00

MarTERA UNDINA project: a multi-modal communication and network-aided positioning system for marine robotics and benthic stations
Beatrice Tomasi - ISEN Yncrea Ouest, NORCE, FRANCE 

The global underwater drone market is projected to register a CAGR of 11.7%. To enable wireless remote operations of multiple autonomous underwater vehicles a mobile wireless network infrastructure is necessary. For this reason, short-range optical and long-range acoustic communication and positioning systems have reached high technology readiness level. However, a unique solution combining these two complementary systems within underwater drones and/or benthic stations has been developed by very few. Low reliability and high outage probability due to challenging opto-acoustic propagation conditions make the optical or the acoustic communication system alone unsuitable for wireless remote operations of autonomous vehicles. 

In the UNDINA project, the consortium, which includes optical and acoustic modems, USBL, and drones’ manufacturers, aims at designing, and demonstrating an opto-acoustic communication system used within an underwater mobile network. Data offloading from an autonomous benthic station towards a linear formation of underwater drones passing above it, is a considered scenario. Another scenario consists of multiple underwater drones simultaneously performing an inspection or a survey. Drones offload their data towards the benthic station that is directly connected to the end user. An additional drone is parked on the benthic station to serve as a relay for the network-aided positioning and communication systems if a link fails.

Deep integration is performed into three commercial underwater drones and in two research benthic stations. Retrofitting subsea instrumentation and the use of communication standards are included by design. A prototype of the opto-acoustic system and the adaptive mobile networking solutions will be presented.