Defining reliability

Craig Wallace didn’t leave Kongsberg Maritime empty handed.

After 18 years with the business he departed in 2022 to help set up Deep Sea Vision, a hydrography specialist giving clients access to cutting edge AUV equipment and expertise for demanding subsea missions.

The now President of Operations at Deep Sea Vision hadn’t just acquired well over a decade of experience and industry insight - operating and supporting integration of Kongsberg innovations across AUVs from five different manufacturers - he also had a firm idea of the technology he could bring onboard to supercharge the company’s obvious potential.

“As a subsea engineer I worked day-in day-out on the ongoing development of the HUGIN AUV family,” Wallace reveals. “That means I wasn’t just aware of its market standing as the world’s most successful AUV, I knew exactly WHY it excelled.

“So when we were looking at applications spanning bathymetric seabed mapping, deep sea minerals, cable and pipe surveys, wreck hunting, and more, I knew what we – and more importantly our customers – needed.

“HUGIN was, and is, in a league of its own.”

The reasons are myriad, he says, but there’s one word Wallace continually returns to.

“Reliability.”

 

Evolving excellence

The Deep Sea Vision executive is quick to point out that while HUGIN’s external appearance hasn’t changed significantly since the early 2000s, under the skin it’s a very different beast — one that encapsulates decades of continuous evolution.

“It’s easy to underestimate how hard it is to break into this market,” he notes. “New vehicles appear all the time, but the sum of the components don’t necessarily make a great system, and they tend not to last. In part it’s because achieving robustness is a challenge. HUGIN, on the other hand, has been around for 25 years, with constant, progressive improvements.”

He continues, adding: “Strength has been built upon strength, leading us to where we are today, with cutting edge autonomy, superior data quality and unbeatable endurance. But the figures and specifications don’t tell the full story. It’s the reliability out in the field that, for me, is the gamechanger.

“From a commercial perspective, it’s an incredible advantage.”

 

Second to none

Deep Sea Vision’s broad array of service offerings – which encompasses everything from supporting oil and gas clients, to a recent search for the resting place of Amelia Earhart’s famed Lockheed 10-E Electra – saw Wallace and his team opt for a HUGIN 6000.

This gives clients the versatility to achieve high resolution data sets at depths ranging from under 10m to 6000m, thanks to next generation SAS and multibeam echosounders, with long range and wide coverage rates for effective survey time and faster access to optimal quality data.

Add in the reliability and, as Wallace states, you can “let her loose”.

He says: “We routinely operate autonomous missions lasting up to, and over, 50 hours. In a recent operation I left the HUGIN 6000 running autonomously for 55 hours, only returning to ensure adequate battery charge – not because I didn’t trust exactly what it was doing.”

Reminiscing, somewhat fondly, he recalls one occasion when the team were 160km offshore and returned to land for a crew change, letting the HUGIN “carry on doing its thing” until the mother ship returned.

“On a serious note,” Wallace underlines, “that is the level of trust we’ve built in this system. It is second to none.”

 

Simultaneous advantage

It’s a reliability that opens up the commercially attractive concept of “concurrent operations”.

Wallace argues that there’s a buzz around “swarm” activities at present, with multiple assets utilised on single missions for rapid results. However, although he sees the need for these “lower cost force multipliers” he says that the this places a burden on the mothership which is constantly tasked to monitor a fleet of inherently less dependable and less capable assets.

“But,” he notes, “if you deploy a HUGIN it can operate autonomously while a support vessel and crew carry out complementary tasks.

“For example, in the minerals market, you often need to take, and log, core samples of the seafloor to understand resources, and that might tie up the mother ship. As a result operators consider three or four separate cruises at extremely high costs. However, if you have a HUGIN it can be dispatched to run entirely independently, sometimes 12 hours ahead of the mothership to handle different tasks simultaneously.

“We see that as one of the biggest cost savers for clients going forwards. No compromise on results, much reduced expenditure.”

 

Embracing potential

With fully redundant safety architecture – including a separate battery system for emergencies – and what Wallace describes as “the market’s best, most integrated technology payload” he says there’s absolutely no reason not to trust a member of the HUGIN family to “get the job done.”

He finishes with a challenge to the market, calling on stakeholders to fully embrace the AUVs capabilities, and autonomy.

“There’s still this instinct in the industry to follow an AUV around with a mothership,” Wallace says. “But that defeats the point. The navigation has advanced to meet autonomy requirements, and the value of HUGIN is that you can absolutely trust it to do its job independently. It’s got a massive track record of successful missions. This is reliability you can build a business on!”

Which, judging by the early success of Deep Sea Vision, is exactly what Wallace and his team are doing.