QUALIFYING FREEDOM
OCEANEERING’S FREEDOM™ AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE HAS BEEN PUT THROUGH ITS PACES IN NORWAY TO RIGOROUSLY TEST ITS SUPERVISORY CONTROL SOFTWARE Steffan Lindsø, Subsea Robotics Product Manager, and Casey Glenn, Electrical Engineer Lead
The industry has long sought a new kind of underwater drone. One that can stay subsea for longer durations without need of a support vessel, offering more flexibility, less frequent maintenance, and reduced health, safety, and environmental risks.
Since 2004, Oceaneering has been at the forefront of remote piloting and control technology, which allows subsea vehicles such as remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) to be piloted from shore. Recent advances in offshore communication networks are ensuring that resident remotely operated and autonomous vehicles are a true option for carrying out offshore operations. Advanced subsea vehicles are benefiting from increased 4G offshore coverage along with faster, stable, and more cost-efficient satellite communications. Additionally, we are seeing more offshore installations with direct fiber to shore connectivity allowing for lower latency and higher fidelity connections. Other key advances that have helped push forward the development of resident and autonomous vehicles are safer, more energy dense, batteries and higher accuracy aided positioning sensors. Both have seen a huge improvement since the early 2000s and these technology advances make resident autonomous vehicles commercially possible. Oceaneering’s Freedom™ Autonomous Vehicle provides a new level of efficiency by combining the work class functions of a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) with the speed, range, and maneuverability of an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV). Freedom is supported by a docking station at seabed and can operate in two modes: remotely piloted via tether to provide real-time control – or operated in an autonomous and tetherless mode, using battery power.
Courtesy of Oceaneering
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