26 Mission CritiCal • Winter 2011

from their sensor systems. This allows the vehicles to better detect obstacles in low vis-ibility environments and helps them tackle difficult operations such as tracking miles of subsea pipeline.

As advances in the technology continue, Dan McLeod, senior program manager at Lockheed Martin, anticipates growing in-terest for AUVs to augment ROV capabili-ties for subsea oil and gas operations. The company’s Marlin AUV is being targeted at the offshore petroleum sector and is gain-ing traction as an ideal system for survey-ing applications and other more compli-cated missions. Unlike many AUVs today, McLeod says that the Marlin has increased capabilities that allow it to do more than the traditional patterned survey or simply “mowing the grass.”

“The Marlin AUV brings additional autono-my and intelligence that allows the vehicle to interact with the data it’s collecting,” McLeod says. “The vehicle is capable of interacting with its sonar and building 3-D models. These models are ideal for real-time change detection, which is important for monitoring offshore infrastructure.”

Going unmanned in the deep

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill brought an influx of attention to the world of offshore drilling; the role re-

motely operated vehicles play in the off-shore oil and gas industry and the potential for autonomous underwater vehicles to sup-port subsea monitoring operations. With the global demand for petroleum at an all time high, companies in the oil and gas sec-tor are exploring in the word’s most remote locations. In many cases the search for re-serves has reached miles below the ocean’s surface at depths inaccessible to divers and manned underwater technologies. As ex-ploration and drilling go further out and deeper in the world’s oceans, the need for autonomous technologies to ensure safe op-erations and divert potential environmental disaster has never been greater. Fortunate-ly, the unmanned systems industry is primed and ready to meet the call.

ROVs are not new to offshore drilling. In fact, the systems were operated as early as the 1960s and saw widespread use beginning in the 1980s. Small, shallow-water ROVs are used for routine monitoring and inspection, while much larger systems, some as large as cargo vans, tackle mis-sions involving equipment gripping and manipulation. Unlike ROVs, AUVs and un-manned surface vehicles have only recently seen more widespread operation in the oil and gas sector. Attributes including long endurance and low operating costs have intrigued the oil and gas industry and re-sulted in the systems being considered for a wide range of applications. More than a year after the Deepwater Horizon spill, AUVs continue to monitor the Gulf of Mexi-co to assess the environmental impact from the accident. But the systems are not limited to environmental monitoring, and a number of companies providing unmanned mari-

time vehicles have been quick to anticipate a growing need for unmanned surface and subsea technologies.

According to Bob Black, CEO of SeeByte Ltd., a software provider for unmanned platforms, ROVs and AUVs are a neces-sary technology as offshore oil and gas operations move into deeper water. Where divers were once used for subsea work, in many cases they have been replaced with remotely operated or autonomous systems capable of withstanding depths and pres-sures unfeasible for humans.

“Diving is a risky and expensive business, and reserves are being located in deeper and deeper waters,” Black says. “This is driving the demand for unmanned technolo-gies and taking the diver out of the equa-tion.”

ROVs and AUVs have been undergoing ma-jor technological advances that are propel-ling them into the oil and gas sector. Many of these advances have been in the sys-tems’ software and subsystems rather than the actual vehicle. For instance, SeeByte’s software is enabling AUVs to make sense of the data and information they are receiving

MarKEt rEPort

Lockheed Martin’s Marlin AUV is being targeted at the off-shore petroleum industry. Photo courtesy Lockheed Martin.

ByLINDSAyVOSS

Mission CritiCal • Winter 2011 27

As a result of increased capability, AUVs are more frequently being used for daunt-ing subsea applications. Missions requir-ing long endurance are best suited for the technologies and include pipeline moni-toring, site surveying, environmental sur-veying, equipment inspection and other applications requiring extensive time at sea. However, AUVs are still not capable enough to replace ROVs. While AUVs offer advantages such as tether-free operations, operating speeds of up to 4 knots and long endurance, according to McLeod the sys-tems lack intervention capability and the ability to transport tons of heavy equipment to underwater worksites. While McLeod an-ticipates AUVs could one day be capable of turning valves and accomplishing more complicated tasks, for now they will aug-ment, rather than replace, their remotely operated counterparts.

While AUVs have received increasing at-tention over the last year due to their op-erations in the Gulf of Mexico, they aren’t the only autonomous technologies making waves. Unmanned systems are also being used to assist the offshore oil and gas indus-try on the ocean’s surface. Liquid Robotics, an ocean data services company head-quartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., is leading the way for unmanned surface technologies in the oil and gas sector with its wave-pow-ered Wave Glider marine robot. The system can be deployed for a year or more using only solar power and waves as energy sources to collect oceanic and environmen-tal data.

According to Brian Anderson, vice presi-dent of oil and gas sales at Liquid Robotics, the company is currently working with BP to conduct flourometry analysis, which tests for and analyzes the refined and crude oil products and chlorophyll in the ocean. But this type of analysis is not the only work that the Wave Glider can tackle. Other appli-cations include ocean current monitoring, weather assessment, seismic data acquisi-tion, acoustics monitoring, marine ocean

life tracking and subsea-to-satellite gateway communications access, to name a few. All of these applications are critical for the oil and gas industry as it designs offshore installations, completes construction and maintains daily operations.

“Liquid Robotics is able to go out with a Wave Glider at a reasonable cost and conduct a comprehensive environmental acoustics study which provides an accurate picture of the ocean,” Anderson says. “This information helps the environmental regula-tors, the scientists and the oil companies by providing hard data for resource manage-ment.”

The potential cost effectiveness of AUVs is the main reason the oil and gas industry is gravitating toward the technology. Un-like ROVs that require a vessel to hold sta-tion during operations, AUVs and surface vehicles such as the Wave Glider are free to roam the ocean; for example, the Wave Glider can be controlled by a Web-based command and control system, making it truly a global ocean survey platform. AUVs are also able to conduct some missions much faster than tethered systems.

McCloud envisions that systems similar to the Marlin AUV will eventually stay at sea with home bases that would allow for bat-tery recharging. For these types of endur-ance operations, launch and retrieval ves-sels would rarely be needed.

“Ultimately the oil and gas industry is look-ing for vehicles that can live on the seabed and conduct vessel independent opera-tions,” says McLeod.

If the systems advance enough, vessel in-dependence would mean significant cost savings for the offshore oil and gas sector, among other important benefits. According to McLeod, a reduction in the number of ships supporting offshore operations would mean fewer people at sea, reduced opera-tional risks, lower energy consumption and a cleaner environment, and ultimately less cost to the operators. All of these are ben-

efits that would be positive for petroleum companies from a cost and public percep-tion standpoint.

It could be some time before AUVs and other unmanned maritime systems reach the point of vessel-independent operations. There are still challenges that will have to be overcome. Particularly, improvements in en-ergy and power will have to be achieved to ensure that underwater and surface technol-ogies can carry larger payloads, operate in strong ocean currents and remain on target for extensive periods of time to accomplish their mission. Once these advancements are achieved, few obstacles will stand in the way of unmanned surface and subsea technologies being the go-to systems for the offshore oil and gas sector. With more at-tention being placed on offshore operations than ever before, petroleum companies will continue to strive to remain competitive, compliant and environmentally conscious. Fortunately, the unmanned systems industry will be prepared with a variety of technolo-gies ready to lead the way.

Lindsay Voss is senior program develop-ment manager at AUVSI.

AUVs and unmanned surface vehicles, like Liquid Robotics’ Wave Glider, offer an added cost savings since they do not require manned vessel deployment. Photo courtesy Liquid Robotics.

2000

2005

2010

Maritime in motion

More than 70 percent of the Earth’s surface is covered in water, yet much of the depths of our oceans and freshwater bodies remain unexplored. Getting a manned vehicle to the greatest depths, battling water pressure and total darkness, is risky business. Now, autonomous underwater vehicles, or gliders, are literally taking researchers 20,000 leagues under

the sea. Their purposes range from cleaning up oil spills to tracking down treasure, but they give users a new perspective on Earth’s own final frontier.

tiMElinE

IRobot sends its Sea-glider UUV to the Gulf of Mexico to help with cleanup from the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Seaglider moni-tored the area of the oil spill, looking for the level of dissolved oxygen and the presence of oil at depths of more than 3,000 feet.

2010

Kongsberg Maritime of Norway, builder of the Hugin family of under-water vehicles, acquires Massachusetts-based Hydroid, builder of the Remus family of AUVs.

2007

2003

The Slocum glider Scarlet Knight, named after the mascot of Rutgers University, wends its way from Tuckerton, N.J., to the coast of Spain, taking 221 days to travel 7,400 kilometers and becoming the star of the documentary “Atlantic Crossing: A Robot’s Daring Mission.”

2009An Explorer vehicle built by ISE lives up to its name and surveys 1,000 kilo-meters of under-ice Arctic water.

2010

In an April expedition, divers found the black box from Air France Flight 447, which crashed off the coast of Brazil in 2009, with the help of the Remus 6000 AUV.

2011

In November, Subsea 7 and SeeByte Ltd. successfully completed a pipeline inspection in the North Sea. Subsea 7’s GeoSub AUV and SeeByte’s Seetrack Offshore and its Autotracker module set a world record by inspecting more than 100 kilometers of pipelines with and AUV.

2006

Bluefin Robotics became a whol-ly owned subsidiary of the Bat-telle Memorial Institute. Battelle is a global science and technology company that develops and com-mercializes technology and man-ages laboratories.

2005

Mission CritiCal • Winter 2011 29

2000 1995 1990 1985 1980 19751965

2005

1970A group of engineers from MIT’s Autonomous Underwa-ter Vehicle Laboratory found Bluefin Robotics. Today, Blue-fin develops more than 80 AUV platforms, and more than 70 different sensors to go with them.

1997

Engineers at Rutgers LEO-15 ocean observatory cre-ate the first Remus AUV, an acronym for Remote Envi-ronmental Monitoring Units, equipped with sensors like an acoustic Doppler current profiler, a conductivity/tem-perature/depth profiler and a side-scan sonar.

1995

Douglas C. Webb, found-er of Webb Research, tests the first Slocum glid-er, named after Joshua Slocum, the first man to sail around the world solo.

1991

Researchers at the Univer-sity of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory build SPURV, or Special Purpose Underwater Research Ve-hicle. It was one of the first AUVs. Researchers con-tinued to use the original SPURV, and four other mod-els, until 1979.

1957

The University of Washington builds SPURV II to study bal-listic missile submarine wakes. SPURV II could run for six hours and reach depths of up to 1,500 meters.

1973

A custom-designed Remus AUV swam below the Catskill Mountains and Hudson River in June to inspect a 45-mile stretch of the Delaware River aqueduct. The 15-hour survey resulted in 160 thousand digital photographs and 600 gigabytes of overall data.

2003

Canada’s International Submarine Engineering starts work on ARCS, its first autonomous underwater ve-hicle, which enters service in 1987 and is still active today, having car-ried out more than 800 dives.

1983

Bluefin Robotics became a whol-ly owned subsidiary of the Bat-telle Memorial Institute. Battelle is a global science and technology company that develops and com-mercializes technology and man-ages laboratories.

2005