A new tool in the subsea industry: the Autonomous Inspection Vehicle (AIV)

Abstract

A new tool for subsea inspection in the offshore oil and gas industry is now going through performance and qualification testing. The Autonomous Inspection Vehicle (AIV) has been designed and built by Subsea7 and SeeByte Ltd to provide the industry with a valuable tool capable of making a positive contribution to life-of-field operations. The station keeping and hovering ability of the AIV is the next step in the evolution of autonomous systems in the marine environment.

Survey class autonomous vehicles have already shown their value with improved data quality and efficiencies compared with traditional methods. The first commercial AIV will be capable of many of the inspection tasks presently carried out by remotely operated vehicles (ROV). Regular inspection data of risers, pipelines, and seabed equipment can be gathered using a single AIV operating directly from an offshore facility.

A more rapid assessment of a field can be made using multiple systems operating together from a single support vessel. This has not been done before with a commercial vehicle; hence, AIV is leading-edge technology. This extended abstract outlines some of the technical challenges in creating the vehicle and how the use of advanced simulation linked to practical testing is being used to ensure the performance of the system. Also discussed is a parallel with the evolution of subsea infrastructure that has fully enabled the capability of the ROV; how the introduction of autonomous technology should be considered with confidence is also demonstrated.