Teledyne Marine has provided two SeaRaptor 6000-metre rated AUVs (autonomous underwater vehicles) to subsea offshore services company Argeo of Norway. The vehicles will add to Argeo’s growing fleet of AUVs and be used to conduct deep-sea surveys for marine industry clients including offshore wind, aquaculture, deepsea minerals, and offshore oil & gas.
The SeaRaptor 6000 AUVs will be equipped with the latest Kraken MinSAS 120 Synthetic Aperture Sonar, which provides large swath area coverage and high-resolution imagery and bathymetry data collection. The vehicles will also be fitted with Teledyne RESON T50-S Multi-Beam dual frequency 200/400 kHz Echo Sounders, Teledyne Benthos Chirp III Sub Bottom Profilers, iXblue PHINS 6000 INSs coupled to Teledyne RDI Tasman DVLs, and CathX Hunter Camera Systems.
All data collected by the vehicles will be processed onboard using Teledyne CARIS OnBoard postprocessing and mosaicking software, enabling quick turnaround during missions. The AUVs are also fitted with a large variety of scientific sensors from RBR which will take conductivity, temperature, pressure, turbidity, pH, dissolved oxygen, redox, CH4 and magnetic measurements to provide valuable water column data which will contribute to better ocean basin characterizations.
Both AUVs will be delivered in 40 foot containers that will also host their Launch and Recovery Systems, deck support and handling equipment and a spares set, thus ensuring the highest redundancy and availability of the systems. The vehicles are designed to be air transportable, including their Li-Ion batteries which offer over 40 hours of autonomy for long endurance missions.
Mike Read, President of Teledyne Marine, commented: “Teledyne is very pleased to supply these unique deep water AUVs to Argeo. We see the strategic partnership forming between our companies as being beneficial, far into the future.”
