Launch and recovery are often the riskiest parts of a subsea operation, and as iDROP COO David Galbraith points out, with a payload of new data, subsea vehicles are more valuable on
Launch and recovery are often the riskiest parts of a subsea operation, and as iDROP COO David Galbraith points out, with a payload of new data, subsea vehicles are more valuable on recovery than they were on launch.
For iDrop, the challenge is how to launch and recover large numbers of its autonomous ocean bottom nodes (OBNs). The current method for laying OBNs, which catch reflected waves during seismic surveys, involves specialist vessels and crews. Instead, iDrop’s Oceanid™ drones are designed to self-steer to the seafloor without the need for ROV help or DP-capable mother vessels. They can then resurface back into simplified collection lines for easy recovery.
All launch and recovery systems (LARS) aim for efficiency, but with swarms, the challenges are amplified. “We have all these bespoke launch and recovery solutions recovering our multi-million-dollar AUVs, but those solutions just don’t scale economically when you’re talking about a variety of different vehicles, or swarms,” says Seth McCammon, a scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. “A LARS system for a swarm needs to be flexible and repeatable, since it will have to pick up many, and likely many different AUVs"
The solution, he says, is to have two types of vehicles:
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