Doing More with Less – Advanced Sensing enabling uROV, a Next Generation Inspection, Maintenance, and Repair Platform for Subsea Assets
Invited
Abstract
Over the last few years, the Oil & Gas Industry has increasingly been driven to provide the most cost-effective and reliable supply of energy possible in order to continue providing over half of the world’s energy mix sustainably. This has required service providers for the industry to relentlessly optimize their technology performance and service delivery to improve asset economics both in existing fields as well as in new developments. A key location for optimization is in the multi-billion-dollar investments in subsea fields which require continual operational expenditures for services such as Inspection, Maintenance, and Repair (IMR) to ensure asset integrity.
IMR service providers currently utilize remotely operated vehicles (ROV) tethered to a surface vessel and piloted in real-time. Recent progress in underwater perception, maritime autonomy, and artificial intelligence can disrupt this old method and allow developing a leaner service model that significantly reduces the costly vessel and personnel support while improving data quality. uROV (untethered ROV) is unique in its approach to this problem. Around producing subsea fields, a higher level of supervision than “launch and forget” is needed. Thus, the uROV platform is based around supervised autonomy wherein a “person in the loop” has real-time feedback from onboard sensors and is then able to update the operation.
This talk will present the novel sensor architecture embedded on the uROV platform to enable this vision. Results include a first demonstration of remote acoustic visualization and control of subsea LiDAR during a high-resolution scan of a P-38 wreck. Extensions under development will enable remote mapping of infrastructure surface temperatures as well as detection and localization of potential hydrocarbon leaks. I will lastly present progress towards utilizing the data generated by these sensors for localization and cluttered environment navigation to safely approach high value assets.
IMR service providers currently utilize remotely operated vehicles (ROV) tethered to a surface vessel and piloted in real-time. Recent progress in underwater perception, maritime autonomy, and artificial intelligence can disrupt this old method and allow developing a leaner service model that significantly reduces the costly vessel and personnel support while improving data quality. uROV (untethered ROV) is unique in its approach to this problem. Around producing subsea fields, a higher level of supervision than “launch and forget” is needed. Thus, the uROV platform is based around supervised autonomy wherein a “person in the loop” has real-time feedback from onboard sensors and is then able to update the operation.
This talk will present the novel sensor architecture embedded on the uROV platform to enable this vision. Results include a first demonstration of remote acoustic visualization and control of subsea LiDAR during a high-resolution scan of a P-38 wreck. Extensions under development will enable remote mapping of infrastructure surface temperatures as well as detection and localization of potential hydrocarbon leaks. I will lastly present progress towards utilizing the data generated by these sensors for localization and cluttered environment navigation to safely approach high value assets.
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Presenters
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Andrew Speck
Schlumberger
Authors
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Andrew Speck
Schlumberger