Anduril Industries is partnering with the National Offshore Wind Research and Development Consortium (NOWRDC) to autonomously inspect undersea power infrastructure.
As part of this partnership, Anduril’s Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV), the Dive-LD, will be used to inspect an existing export power cable from Block Island to Point Judith, Rhode Island, by the end of 2023.
The Dive-LD is a modular and customizable commercial large displacement AUV that can be optimized for various defense and commercial mission types, such as bathymetric and geophysical surveys, long-range oceanographic sensing, undersea battlespace awareness, mine countermeasures, anti-submarine warfare, seabed mapping and infrastructure health monitoring.
“Emerging technology is essential to expanding America’s offshore clean energy development,” said NOWRDC’s Executive Director, Lyndie Hice-Dunton. “Technologies like the Dive-LD will be critical for controlling costs, reducing downtime, and addressing at-sea maintenance safely and efficiently. What we demonstrate in this partnership will have implications for offshore assets across sectors.”
Using Metron’s executive mission autonomy, advanced autonomous target recognition algorithms and data quality analysis, the Dive-LD will survey the existing export power cable, autonomously identify potential problem areas, and dynamically re-task to perform additional higher-fidelity inspections of any abnormalities.
Dive-LD will allow a complicated, multi-phase effort to be completed in a single autonomous mission. The capabilities demonstrated in the NOWRDC partnership are also portable to other underwater applications, including telecommunication cables, oil and gas pipelines, and national security assets.
“The NOWRDC partnership is an ideal demonstration of the Dive-LD’s ability to autonomously execute complicated, dangerous missions that used to require multiple passes by manned or remotely-controlled assets,” said Sam Russo, Senior Director of Business Development at Anduril. “The Dive-LD’s fully autonomous seafloor asset health monitoring capabilities aren’t only critical to the future of offshore energy development but can deliver safer and more cost-efficient seafloor operations for multiple commercial and national security missions.”
“In order to achieve our national offshore wind goals we will need new innovative technologies to meet the opportunities and challenges ahead. The development of a long range, long endurance AUV for the offshore wind industry, and especially one that has been developed here in the United States, is critical to scaling and growing our industry,” said Damian Bednarz, Managing Director at Attentive Energy. “This partnership is beneficial for the US offshore wind industry as we adopt innovative solutions as we work to mature the domestic market.”
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