Underwater mothership will cut costs and reduce emissions from offshore maintainers

By transporting ROVs and AUVs in a lightweight, autonomous submersible, much of this financial and environmental cost can be eliminated. Once at site, the platform submerges to deploy subsea robots without the need for crane drops, which means deployment is possible in rough weather and stress on the robot’s sensors and tooling is reduced.

A further transformative step will be coupling automation software for co-ordinating multiple platforms with communications technologies that can utilise satellite, 4G and 5G as best suits each location at sea. HonuWorx distributed control centres (DCC) will allow for remote supervision from shore, while equipping the mothership with charging points will resolve many of the battery life issues that restrict the use of ROVs at sea.

ORE Catapult operations and maintenance centre general manager Ben George said, “The offshore wind industry recognises that robotics and automation are key technologies to ensure decades of continued growth for the sector.

“Sending people to ever-more remote and deepwater sites will become progressively more difficult and expensive.

“Cost reduction, safety improvement and operational integration, those three challenges are driving technology development in offshore wind operations and maintenance.

“That is why this project is so significant: it addresses those factors head on, while also aligning with our own priorities around accelerating robotic, sustainable and smart technologies in the sector.”

HonuWorx chief executive and co-founder Lee Wilson said, “HonuWorx was founded with a vision to accelerate the uptake of underwater robotics technology in vital sectors such as offshore renewables.

“Our team has spent many years pushing the envelope in subsea robotics and believe that existing operating modes can no longer scale sustainably, or at the pace needed to address some of our most critical challenges. We are delighted to be working with ORE Catapult on this project. It will give us an acute sense of the issues offshore wind operators face and how we can optimise our technologies to remove them.”

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