Maslin, Elaine
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AUV Extravaganza: Tech advances in Autonomous Underwater Vehicles
Modularity, flexibility and intelligence are the bywords of some of the latest generations of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) hitting the market, but not for all. Some are taking a more industrial mass production approach and/or going for a more fixed payload offering, to bring slimmer, lighter but still highly capable vehicles to the market. Elaine Maslin spoke to some of the manufacturers with their latest vehicles on show at this year’s Oceanology in London.The range of colors – pink…
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Carbon Capture & Storage: A New Lease of Life for Submarine Pipelines?
Since 2019, hydrogen and carbon capture and storage (CCS) have risen up the political agenda, globally, offering a route to decarbonization, as well as (more recently), increased energy security. Many are eying use of existing pipeline to make both happen. Elaine Maslin takes a look.Hydrogen production and CCS offers a more or less “green” decarbonization options for oil and gas companies, alongside carbon capture and storage (CCS)…
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Edward Heerema – Dutch Courage with Single-minded Focus
Edward Heerema is founder and president of Allseas, which brought the world’s largest construction vessel, Pioneering Spirit, to the market. The company, which also brought innovation to the pipelay sector, has added its latest trick to Pioneering Spirit – its jacket lift system. But Allseas is also targeting deepsea mining and has its sights on the offshore wind market. Elaine Maslin caught up with…
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Oceanology ’22 Day 3: New Companies, New Ideas
The final day at Oceanology International in London was quieter, but the conversations still continued, including those with a new cohort of companies looking to offer new ways of doing business, as MTR's Elaine Maslin found. The final day of this year’s Oceanology International conference, being held at London’s Excel Centre, was a quieter affair than the past two days, but those who remained were…
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Oceanology ’22 Day 2: New Demands Drive Ocean Innovation
Day two at Oceanology International in London had a full crowd and plenty of demonstrations of collaboration, as the industry looks to new horizons, as MTR’s Elaine Maslin found on the show floor. Making new industries fly can demand new ways of working while new technologies can open up whole new classes of vehicle. Demonstrations of both were clearly visible at Oceanology International at London’s Excel Centre.The challenges are big…
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Oceanology '22 Day 1: Expect More Data and Disruption in the Ocean Space
Day one at Oceanology International in London was bustling with activity, as MTR's Elaine Maslin found, reporting from the show floor.Data and disruption are coming up as key themes at this year’s Oceanology International conference, in what’s the first time the event has run in three years. The event, being held at London’s Excel Centre, has attracted an international crowd, including a cohort of new entrants…
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Autonomy: Sun, Sail & Subsea – Not a Holiday, but a Hybrid UxV Platform
Ten years ago, Ocean Aero’s unique hybrid sailboat-submarine was a novel idea being developed in a San Diego garage. Today, the company has a growing fleet of vehicles on the water and a $14 million funding injection to take it the next level. Elaine Maslin reports.Earlier this year, a great illustration of the ongoing adoption of marine autonomous systems was made through the International Maritime Exercise (IMX) 2022…
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Putting Power on the Seafloor is a Fuel Cell Future
Two outfits, one in Germany and one in the US, are chasing a goal of supplying long-term subsea power in remote locations, via fuel cells, to users including oceanographic observatories to underwater vehicles. Elaine Maslin takes a look.Long term operation of subsea equipment or instruments in remote locations poses something of a challenge. While battery technology has improved vastly, it’s still not sufficient for long term deployments.For a decade or so…
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Subsea Expo Day 2: Remote and Autonomous Ops are the Trend, Barriers Remain
[ Elaine Maslin reports from the show floor at Subsea Expo in Aberdeen this week for Offshore Engineer and Marine Technology Reporter ]The coronavirus pandemic has helped to accelerate a drive towards the use of remote technologies, but regulations, acceptance and access to skilled people are still barriers to greater adoption, day two of Subsea Expo heard today (Wednesday, March 23).On the showfloor, companies including SAAB, IKM Subsea, and L3 are showcasing remote and uncrewed vehicles.
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Subsea Expo Focuses on $3 Trillion Opportunity
One of the first major UK industry events since the start of the Coronavirus pandemic heard Tuesday morning how, after a period of Covid-induced hibernation, the UK’s subsea sector is emerging into a new world of opportunity.Speaking at Subsea Expo in Aberdeen, Neil Gordon, CEO of the event’s organizer, the newly formed Global Underwater Hub (GUH), said that there was a US$3 trillion global opportunity by 2030 in the blue economy that the UK’s subsea industry could target…
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Subsea Vehicles: Diving into the Autosub Program
In our last MTR, to mark 25 years of the UK’s National Oceanography Centre (NOC) working with AUVs, we talked with Dr. Maaten Furlong, Head of the Marine Autonomous & Robotic Systems Group at NOC, about the organization’s history and future plans. Now we take a deep dive into the Autosub program.The UK’s National Oceanography Center (NOC) has a long history, going back to the National Institute of Oceanography…
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Subsea Vehicles: A Journey to the Under – and Outer – Worlds
It’s often remarked upon that we know more about the surface of the moon than we do the depths of our ocean. Scientists are now shooting for both – and beyond. Work by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), developed for exploring Mars, is now being leveraged by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) to help tap Earth’s deepest water secrets. In turn, WHOI’s work will help NASA explore oceans…
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Interview: André Lima Cordeiro, Executive Manager, Subsea Systems, Petrobras
Brazil has always pushed the boundaries of deepwater exploration and production – and it’s still doing so today. With some of the world’s largest deepwater reservoirs, that are often complex in themselves, it’s had to come up with new solutions. Elaine Maslin found out more from André Lima Cordeiro.Petrobras has often led the charge in developing and deploying subsea processing and boosting systems.
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Floating Offshore Wind: Attention Turns Subsea for Power Transport
From being an ugly duckling, floating offshore wind is now the Cinderella of the offshore renewables world. Attention is now being paid to floating and even subsea substation concepts to help bring this power to shore. Over the past year, expectations around the growth in the floating offshore wind development have grown, significantly. Many are piling into the market, seeing that it could give them a chance to ramp up renewables capacity quickly…
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OE’s 2021 Top of the Festive YouTube Video Pops
No year is the same without the annual corporate festive YouTube videos. And while the pandemic is yet again trying to do its best to ruin our holidays, offshore companies have still provided us with a crop of Christmas cheer.Oceaneering, again, tops our Top of the Festive Pops. It seems that having a theme park business side-line supports pretty neat 3D animations. However, neat tools are no good…
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Sourcing Seismic with Subsea Swarms
Swarm behavior of underwater vehicles has long been on the wish list. Couple that with collecting seismic data and you have an interesting challenge. The seismic industry has a track record for innovation – Blue Ocean Seismic Services is taking on the latest challenge. Seismic data acquisition isn’t perhaps at the top of many lists when it comes to discussing innovation in the marine sector. Yet it’s been an area that’s seen leaps and bounds in innovation…
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Offshore Renewable Energy: A Port Puzzle for Floating Offshore Wind
After being very much on the margins of the offshore wind industry, floating offshore wind now appears to be ready to hit the mainstream. With gigawatt scale developments already on the horizon, what will the infrastructure needed to build and support them look like? Over the past 12 months, the floating offshore wind sector appears to have had a major dose of adrenaline. While the largest development…
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MTR100: When it Comes to Drones, Big is Good. <1m is Better.
Over the last couple of decades, autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) have become fully established work horses of ocean mapping and surveillance. That doesn’t mean there’s not room for some innovation. Elaine Maslin takes a look at some activity in the sub-1m collaborative drone market.New breeds of AUV are on their way. Some are bigger, but there’s also a host of companies developing small (<1m)…
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Subsea Vehicles: To Be (resident), or Not to Be?
That’s the question? Or, more specifically, are there alternative ways of delivering robotics to where they’re needed without having to have seabed docking stations? Elaine Maslin takes a look. The idea for some kind of resident subsea vehicle has been around for some time. From BP’s considerations in 1986 for an integrated ROV launch system onboard the SWOPS oil production system to support subsea…
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Tech File: A Resident Eyeball ROV
There's also space in the market for resident observation systems, believe Boxfish Research and Transmark Subsea. The two companies signed a partnership agreement in October 2020 to deliver a fully autonomous resident observation ROV, the ARV-i.The ARV-i combines underwater vehicle, photography and robotics technology from Boxfish Research and underwater power and communications from Transmark Subsea.
February 2022
