Next Generation Subsea Inspection, Maintenance and Repair

The vision of NextGenIMR has been to solve the challenges of increased level of autonomy in underwater operations. Vehicles which operate underwater today are connected to a ship by a tether. This demands a ship, people on-board and good weather conditions. In the future, operations in our oceans will be even smarter, safer and cheaper. This means no ship and no cable, but underwater vehicles which can solve tasks autonomously. Working autonomously and close to subsea installations carries high risk. Knowing the exact position of the vehicle is critical to navigate and carry out tasks safely. NextGenIMR has developed algorithms and methods to efficiently calculate the position and orientation of underwater vehicles during intervention. Moreover, tested and proven technology which makes it possible to seamlessly switch between operator and autonomous control during IMR operations. Working close to subsea installations carries high risk and novel methods for risk management has been developed. The project has produced more than 20 international scientific articles, 15 master candidates and 3 PhD candidates. Moreover, a movie has been produced and can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=nextgenimr

This project will develop novel integrated sensor platforms with robust perception methods and collision-free motion planning algorithms for subsea inspection and light intervention operations. The project will also focus on subsea factory design. The pro ject will especially address autonomous platforms but results will also be applicable to cable connected ROVs that will shift from manual to automatic control with autonomous functions. Advances in sensor technology, communication, ICT architecture design , localization methods, robotics and task-planning opens new possibilities to bridge the gap between manual control and autonomy. The project will combine and integrate novel concepts for sensor platforms, advanced localisation and perception methods base d on vision and acoustic sensors and collision free path planning and high-level task planning for autonomous services. NextGenIMR results will be tested, verified and demonstrated in full scale test beds available to the project. Subsea processing is the factories of the future for the oil and gas industry will constitute complex installations including pump stations, compressors, storage tanks etc. Next generation of tools and sensor platforms may be situated on the sea floor in garages next to the fact ory in an on demand state. Maintaining high regularity with such complex subsea systems requires reliable installed equipment, but also efficient ways for inspection, condition monitoring and early detection of equipment fault. The project will address a number of research challenges related to future subsea inspection and light intervention i) collision avoidance subject to false sensor signals and communication delay, ii) high precision relative navigation and localization subject to signal disturbances and fouling, iii) path planning based on real-time sensor data in uncertain environments and iv) subsea template design for autonomous interventions.