Courtesy of HonuWorx
COST-EFFECTIVE SUBSEA OPERATIONS WITH
HONUWORX Lee Wilson and Lucas Wissmann, HonuWorx Co-Founders, www.honu-x.com
HonuWorx is pioneering robotics technology for restoring, exploring and commercialising the ocean’s resources. The company’s visionary Loggerhead concept will make sustainable subsea operations at scale a reality for many sectors in the blue economy.
A BOLD APPROACH The world needs to work subsea—for the sustainable development of energy, to advance understanding of our planet, to restore and monitor the oceans and for the responsible harvesting of their resources. Subsea robots are critical to the continued growth of many ocean economy sectors. However, the cost and environmental footprint of traditional deployment methods is no longer sustainable with their reliance on large, crewed, diesel-powered vessels.
HonuWorx’s Loggerhead concept (patent pending) is a gamechanging development that utilises an uncrewed submersible robotic vessel as a mobile power and communication hub for ROVs and AUVs. Emerging uncrewed vessel concepts may face difficulties deploying in heavy weather, whereas Loggerhead deploys the robots subsea to avoid splash-zone risks. With impact risks associated with launching robots through the splash-zone eliminated, ROV and AUV designs can be simplified and optimised for the task at hand.
Despite growing demand, the global intervention-class ROV fleet of over 1,000 vehicles rarely achieves annual utilisation beyond 50%, largely because of steep costs in transport and deployment. A 21-day subsea inspection campaign can run at least £1.5m and emit more than 500 tonnes of carbon dioxide. Fully configured vessels can cost upwards of £100k per day, with the ROV and crew making up a fraction of the overall price tag. Because of the cost domination of the vessel, work is generally priced on a day rate, regardless of the complexity of the subsea task.
Loggerhead’s major innovations are three-fold: (1) the integration of a long endurance submersible delivery craft with remotely operated or autonomous “worker vehicles”, (2) flexible, Distributed Control Centers (DCCs) to support human supervision and control by onshore operators, support teams and observers that could be distributed geographically and (3) advanced software to mitigate teleoperation issues with robots, and make the best use of the communications modes, whether satellite and 4G/5G (or a mix of both).
24 | ROVplanet
