Subsea Vehicles News

Dive Technologies Completes Sea Trials with Kraken Sonar, Batteries

Quincy, Massachusetts based Dive Technologies completed successful sea trials of Kraken’s Miniature Synthetic Aperture Sonar (MINSAS 120) integrated onto Dive’s Large Displacement Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (DIVE-LD). The DIVE-LD is also powered by Kraken’s pressure tolerant batteries.“Our team is incredibly excited to continue working with Kraken Robotics,” said Bill Lebo, Dive Co-Founder. “Following our previous successful sea trials with Kraken’s batteries, our team was keen to continue the positive momentum in our vehicle development with integration of

IKM Subsea Wins $23.4m contract with Nexans Norway

Nexans Norway and IKM Subsea have signed an agreement for ROV services on CLV  Nexans Skagerrak, CLV Nexans Aurora and third-party vessel support. The contract (three years plus two option years) value including options is $23.4m.IKM Subsea have since 2012 supplied a Merlin WR200 Work class ROV’s onboard on the C/S Nexans Skagerrak. For the new contract, IKM Subsea’s remote operation platform and capacity is a vital part of the service offering. IKM Subsea have, since 2017, operated ROV’s remotely from onshore 24/7-365 and gained vast experience on this offering.IKM Onshore

Saab Seaeye Scores Win @ Taiwan Wind Farm

The Saab Seaeye Cougar XT Compact robotic vehicle has been chosen for Taiwan’s huge offshore wind farm development.Taiwan’s Metal Industries Research and Development Centre (MIRDC) will train ROV pilots to assist in the development and maintenance of the turbines’ underwater structures.The training will be undertaken by MIRDC at the Maritime Technology Innovation Centre created by the Bureau of Energy and the Ministry of Economic Affairs for the cultivation of national offshore wind energy talents.Created for challenging environmental conditions inherent in shallow water operations

Coda Octopus Debuts Echoscope4G C500 Inspector System

Coda Octopus released the new Echoscope4G C500 Inspector system, designed as a modular, mobile platform to make sonar deployment simple and fast.The Inspector comprises a bespoke, lightweight integrated sensor platform supporting the ISAR rotator and the C500 sonar. The Inspector platform can be suspended and lowered from a single lifting point for near-surface temporary deployments or can be placed directly on the seabed using the extendable tripod legs included with the system. A single integrated sensor cable (ISC) connects the ISAR and C500 sonar to the 3D Connect integrated topside unit providing

Kraken Robotics Enters LOI to Acquire PanGeo Subsea

Kraken Robotics Inc. has entered into a non-binding letter of intent (LOI) in connection with the proposed acquisition of PanGeo Subsea Inc. from Cahill Innovation Inc, a member of the Cahill Group of Companies, and Argentum Asset Management AS. Moya Cahill, a director of Kraken, is a shareholder of Cahill Innovation Inc, and she resigned as a director of Kraken prior to the approval and execution of the LOI in order to ensure proper governance and review of the transaction by a fully arm’s length board.PanGeo is a private Canadian services company specializing in high resolution 3D acoustic

RENEWABLE ENERGY: Smart Power Buoy - Wave Power Expands Recharge at Sea Possibilities

From powering sensor systems to recharging autonomous vehicles to feeding the power grid, Resen Waves is making step changes in the renewable wave power market. Roland Boysen, CCO, discussed the technology and the potential with MTR.While generations of innovators have attempted, to varying degrees of success, to harness the tremendous renewable power potential of waves, the Danish company Resen Waves contends it is able to do just that, in a scale to remotely power sea-based instruments and vehicles, and eventually all the way up to entire cities.The Resen Waves Smart Power Buoy is designed to

Shrinking Sea Meadows Store More Carbon Than Forests. Scientists Race to Track What’s Left

Hundreds of miles from the nearest shore, ribbon-like fronds flutter in the ocean currents sweeping across an underwater mountain plateau the size of Switzerland.A remote-powered camera glides through the sunlit, turquoise waters of this corner of the western Indian Ocean, capturing rare footage of what scientists believe is the world’s largest seagrass meadow.Human activity is helping destroy the equivalent of a soccer field of these seagrasses every 30 minutes around the world, according to the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP). And scientists are now racing to take stock of what remains.“Th

Submerged Pick-Up Truck Located Using Underwater Sonar

Moeding, Beadle County’s Emergency Management Director, experienced this first hand. “We used our JW Fishers side scan sonar to pinpoint the location of a 2014 Dodge pickup that was driven into the James River, our local river here in Huron SD.” The driver behind the wheel ran the vehicle into the river during the middle of the night, but could not remember the exact location.  After scouring the shoreline, tire tracks were seen going into the river and the dive team was deployed to find the vehicle. “You can see the pickup was found and its orientation was clearly shown

Phoenix, SUPSALV Perform Record 3.6-mile Deep Salvage

depth of 19,075 feet. This equates to just over 3.6 miles beneath the sea and is 266 feet deeper than the previous salvage record, also set by Phoenix and SUPSALV during an operation in 2019.  The helicopter was located in March of 2020 using the U.S. Navy’s Autonomous Underwater Vehicle “Trondheim” and then, a year later, Phoenix and SUPSALV returned to the site and recovered the helicopter on March 21st, 2021 using the U.S. Navy’s Remotely Operated Vehicle “CURV 21” and Fly Away Deep Ocean Salvage System.  Both Trondheim and CURV 21 are rated

Dive Technologies, Metron Partner Up

firm Dive Technologies has entered a commercial partnership with Metron, Inc. "This partnership will directly support the commercialization of Metron’s Autonomy, Navigation, Command & Control (ANCC) software suite on Dive Technologies’ large displacement autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), the DIVE-LD. Initial sea testing of the DIVE-LD with ANCC software was completed in December 2020," Dive Technologies said.“The DIVE-LD is pier-launched and designed to stay at sea for up to ten days. The capability of Metron’s advanced autonomy technology is paramount to

RBR debuts RBRquartz³ Q|plus Pressure Logger

RBR announced the commercial release of the new RBRquartz³ Q|plus pressure logger to meet the demands for high-accuracy, long-term measurements of sea level, tidal, and wave dynamics by coastal oceanographers . At the heart of the RBRquartz³ Q|plus is an integrated Paroscientific Digiquartz pressure sensor for best-in-class initial accuracy, resolution, and low-drift performance.Intended for long-term autonomous or realtime observations, the RBRquartz³ Q|plus has high stability and can resolve water level changes as small as 100ppb at 16Hz sampling rate (for example, at 50m depth

New ASV Delivered to the US Navy

San Francisco Bay Area based marine robotics company Marine Advanced Robotics said it has delivered a WAM-V 16 autonomous surface vehicle ASV to Naval Information Warfare Center (NIWC) Pacific to support multi-domain unmanned maritime system autonomy.According to Marine Advanced Robotics, the WAM-V technology is particularly suited for subsurface, surface and air sensor deployments in real world ocean conditions where asset recovery is critical in less-than-ideal conditions.“WAM-V stability and portability are unmatched and together with NIWC and our industry partners, we demonstrated the

Divers Find Deepest Known Shipwreck USS Johnston

.The wreck was originally discovered on the edge of an undersea cliff in October 2019 by the late Paul Allen’s Vulcan Inc. and vessel R/V Petrel under the leadership of renowned ocean wreck explorer Robert Kraft. On that expedition, film of pieces of the vessel were taken by a remotely-operated vehicle (ROV), but the majority of the wreck including its upright, intact forward two-thirds including bow, bridge, and mid-section lay deeper than the ROV’s rated depth limit of approximately 20,000 feet (6,000 meters).The Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC) assessed the wreck as probably

Subsea Defense: Netherlands Royal Navy appoints RTSYS for 7 ASW Training Targets

RTSYS confirmed a multi-million dollar contract with the State of the Netherlands for the supply of 7 SEMA: Portable & Recoverable ASW Training Target.SEMA has been awarded as the easiest Autonomous Underwater Vehicle to operate and to offer the widest range of acoustic training capabilities: acoustic echo-repeater (1 to 33 kHz); 5 bands for active sonar frequency; 2 bands for active homing torpedo; 6 narrowband (200 Hz to 38 kHz); 2 broadband (450 Hz to 8 kHz and 10 to 23 kHz) and to finish an acoustic recorder with data encryption.These acoustic features will allow both Dutch and Belgium Forces

Arctic Rays Launches Imaging Payload for AUVs

Groton, Mass. based Arctic Rays, LLC has released Swordfish, a fully-integrated, geo-referenced, still and video imaging system payload for small autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV).Swordfish comes standard with a 12.3 MP camera, high-output LEDs producing 60,000 lm (strobe) or 6,000 lm dimmable (continuous), on-board CPU and a 512 GB solid-state data drive.  Still images can be captured at 12.3 MP at a rate of 4 Hz.  Video can be captured at 720p HD @ 60fps, 1080p FHD @ 30fps, or 4K UHD @ 10 fps.Arctic Rays said Swordfish is scalable to fit any AUV and customizable per user requests.

Riding the Tides: Interview with Jason Hayman, CEO, Sustainable Marine Energy

Harnessing the power of the tides is not for the squeamish, with the roster of trials and failures long and distinguished. Jason Hayman and his Sustainable Marine Energy crew are putting their tech to the test in one of the harshest spots on the planet, the Bay of Fundy, as his discussed with Marine Technology TV.Jason, to start, how did you come to a career in the offshore renewable energy field?I suppose my interest got piqued back in about 2003. I went to a lecture at the University of Newcastle and they had a wave energy crowd there and a tidal energy developer. It was pretty cool tech, and at the

Solar-powered USV Delivered to Mississippi State University

SeaTrac Systems, Inc. announced the sale and delivery of one of its SP-48 persistent uncrewed surface vehicles (USV) to a team at Mississippi State University’s (MSU) Geosystems Research Institute (GRI), in Starkville, Miss. GRI selected the SP-48 to support a research study funded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to study real time water quality monitoring and threat assessment of navigable waterways of the Gulf of Mexico region. GRI develops, operates, and maintains an increasingly integrated research and transition program, the results of which raise awareness and understanding of the Gulf

Beneath the Waves: Keep Your AUV Safe by Docking Subsea

Find out about ISEs experiences with getting its Explorer class AUV to dock autonomously during it’s recent sea trials.The atmosphere on the bridge of ISE’s vessel Researcher is tense. All mission checks are complete; conditions are optimum for docking; everything looks good. The vehicle, a 5-meter-long Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (or AUV), is on mission underwater. Updates from the AUV are now limited to acoustic chirps every 30 seconds and everyone is waiting anxiously. Will it succeed?Whenever an AUV is sent underwater to test new systems it is an exciting time, and for the

JV Aims to Develop Next-Gen AUV for Mine Countermeasure

Project aimed at developing next-generation mine countermeasure technology using AI to enhance precision of detection and classification support function, aiming for real-time signal processing on board the autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV).Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI) has concluded a research and prototype production contract with Japan’s Ministry of Defense for next-generation mine-countermeasure technology, a France-Japan joint research project being conducted based on agreement between the countries' defense authorities.The research and prototype manufacturing project aims

UK Navy Experimenting with New Autonomous Vessel

The British Royal Navy has taken delivery of a new autonomous vessel as the service examines the use of cutting-edge unmanned craft across a range of military operations including surveillance and force protection. The new vessel, named Madfox (short for maritime demonstrator for operational experimentation), was officially handed over to the Navy's experimentation innovator NavyX, who is working toward preparing the uncrewed surface vessel (USV) for a demanding year of testing at sea."With Madfox now directly in the hands of NavyX, the team will be able to explore a multitude of issues

Flight Control Tech Set to Dive Subsea

Decades worth of flight controls expertise is making its way subsea on board the U.K.’s next generation submarines.BAE Systems said it is adapting controls typically used in fly-by-wire aircraft and applying them in a marine environment for Dreadnought class subs. The complete Active Vehicle Control Management (AVCM) system will oversee all major aspects of the submarines’ maneuvering capability to the highest levels of safety and reliability, similar to existing systems on modern air transport platforms, the company said.Jon Tucker, Director for Maritime Controls at BAE Systems Controls

Subsea Craft Moves Ops to Portsmouth

SubSea Craft Ltd. and BAR Technologies signed a five-year contract to further reinforce their partnership, a deal which will see SubSea Craft move its operations from Havant into the Camber, Portsmouth, Hampshire alongside BAR Technologies.The new agreement, made between SubSea Craft CEO Scott Verney and John Cooper, CEO, BAR Technologies, will cement the relationship for the continued development of the Diver Delivery Unit VICTA . Additionally, both firms will develop a five-year strategy that sees the two companies working more closely together to advance the VICTA Class, alongside fostering an open

No Need for Mothership: Kongsberg Launches HUGIN Endurance AUV

Norway's Kongsberg Maritime has announced the next generation of its HUGIN Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) that can carry out long missions without a mothership.Named HUGIN Endurance, Kongsberg Maritime says its new AUV boosts operational duration to approximately 15 days, enabling extended survey and inspection missions far from shore."This longevity allows HUGIN Endurance to undertake extensive missions without the support of a mothership. Shore-to-Shore operations offer the opportunity to reduce carbon footprint for commercial activities and yet retain unrivaled data resolution and

Forum Builds Advanced Submarine Rescue Vehicle

ROV manufacturer Forum Energy Technologies has completed the construction of what it says is a highly advanced submarine rescue vehicle (SRV), which may be utilized to extract submariners from distress situations.According to Forum, the LR-class SRV is capable of rescuing up to 17 people at a time and operate at depths of up to 600 meters. "The new model has increased power and an advanced auxiliary thruster control system that allows for speeds of up to four knots, enabling it to operate in high currents. The vehicle is able to attach to submarines at highly precarious angles, above 40

C-Innovation Orders Sonardyne Tech for ROV Ops in Brazil

Marine services company C-Innovation (C-I) has ordered a package of Sonardyne’s underwater positioning and navigation systems to support its operations offshore Brazil.Remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) on board six ROV support vessels (RSVs) in the country will be equipped with Sonardyne inertial, gyrocompass and Doppler technologies, as well as hybrid acoustic-inertial systems.C-I has ordered SPRINT inertial navigation systems (INS), a Lodestar attitude and heading reference system (AHRS), Syrinx Doppler velocity logs (DVLs) and Sonardyne’s hybrid acoustic-inertial underwater vehicle

VIDEO: Barcode Tags Could Cut Subsea Pipeline Inspection Costs

inertial navigation firm iXblue.According to the companies involved, the solution would remove the need for surface vessels, which are traditionally used in pipeline inspection projects.Surface vessels with acoustic positioning are traditionally used to monitor the deployment of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) or Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs). The subsea vehicles then collect the required information – such as a pipeline’s general aspect and route, anode consumption, free span, burial, and crossing areas – using observation sensors."In order to reduce pipeline inspection

SubSeaSail G6 Platform Passes the Test

The Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) along with logistical support from the US Navy successfully tested their SubSeaSail G6 platform at multiple coastal sites off the Vieques Island, Puerto Rico. Remote sensing applications for monitoring underwater unexploded ordnance were demonstrated by mounting a passive filter assembly to the G6 platform to detect explosive compounds in the water. Additionally, a water quality sensor was mounted to monitor other water quality parameters including temperature, salinity, depth, and turbidity.  During

Amman Mineral Orders Forum ROV for Subsea Mining Support

Indonesian mining firm Amman Mineral has ordered an ROV from Forum Energy Technologies to support its mining operations at Indonesia's second-largest copper and gold mine.Forum Energy Technologies said Friday that, under the order, it would supply one of its observation-class remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), to be deployed at Batu Hijau on the island of Sumbawa, Indonesia, for subsea mining operations. The Sub-Atlantic brand Super Mohawk II ROV system will be equipped with two five-function manipulator arms for complex underwater procedures. The new asset will replace the company&rsquo