Subsea Robotics - AUV Pipeline Inspection Development Project

Abstract

Abstract Early in 2014, TotalEnergies E&P, Chevron ETC, and Oceaneering Subsea Robotics (SSR) (Formerly C&C Technologies) came to an agreement to jointly develop an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle, AUV, system capable of performing complete AUV pipeline inspection for deepwater pipelines. The main goal of this project is to deliver improved operational efficiency and data quality compared to that provided by conventional Remotely Operated Vehicle, ROV, inspection. This development has been promoted to avoid high costs and improve on the low inspection speeds of tools such as ROV and Remotely Operated Towed Vehicles, ROTV, with associated expensive vessel spreads, particularly in deep water. To meet this goal numerous AUV associated technologies were developed such as: autonomous pipeline tracking, feature-based navigation, improved sensors for data collection, obstacle avoidance systems and other adaptive-behavior functionalities. The results of the combined development & trials conducted between 2014 – 2018 progressed the vehicle software development and identified the limitations of adapting current vehicle design. Capitalizing on these results, later in 2019 a new purpose-built vehicle solution was introduced with enhanced command and control capabilities, intending to significantly improve vehicle performance to achieve the intended results. The development and acceptance of the functionality applied: scaled and prototype testing, use of a realistic test environment in shallow water, software simulation and a focus on achieving a satisfactory level of reliability of the behaviors. In this paper, qualification process and data is presented associated with the performance of the vehicle observed during an Offshore Pilot, conducted in Q3 2021 in the North Sea, using operational pipelines. The demonstration of reliable adaptive behaviors and functionality will enable the acceptance of this new technology through the qualification process. This will lead to AUV's becoming the industry standard for future pipeline inspection campaigns and achieve a milestone towards resident applications.