The Challenge
There are a number of challenging environments that would benefit from fully autonomous operations including oil & gas, nuclear decommissioning and undersea exploration. However, there are a number of limitations that have to be overcome before that desire can be fulfilled.
Firstly, there has to be a sensing suite that can be used to navigate adequately in all these environments and be able to undertake the various missions. We have to be able to convince users, regulators and insurers that any such deployed system will always do what is needed.
More importantly, we have be to be sure that it won’t do what we don’t want it to do - ever; and we also need to show what the behaviour will be when [not if!] something goes wrong. Evidence from the development has to be made available to support a system safety and, where applicable, security case.
Introducing the A2I2 consortium
A consortium of Rovco (project lead), Forth Engineering, D-RisQ, Thales, the University of Manchester and the National Oceanography Centre will be using its combined expertise to produce two demonstrators of fully autonomous underwater vehicles, one to meet the requirements of off-shore coring and one to operate in wet nuclear storage pond inspections and interactions.
Key features of the demonstrators that are being developed will be the use of enhanced autonomy and perception, hover capability, and the application of software verification tools to ensure robust and safe operation. The consortium strength is the combination of skills from the advanced underwater communications being developed by Manchester University, the Rovco optical sensor, advanced automatic verification from D-RisQ, the integration and market access by Rovco, Forth and Thales as well as the high profile use in underwater exploration by the National Oceanography Centre.
The facilities, knowledge and backgrounds of the individuals involved is a great strength with industrial expertise from diverse backgrounds in aerospace, automotive, defence and cyber security all bringing value add to the project.
Proposed Solution
The proposed solution is the development of small (<200kg) hover capable Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) equipped with a novel visual mapping system and enhanced and verified on-board autonomy. The design of the platforms will be scalable enabling it to work across domains. It will be capable of conducting very close inspection and intervention tasks, such as, cathodic protection surveys (oil and gas), coring (offshore), visual inspection (nuclear) and moving small items (nuclear).
Successful delivery of the A2I2 prototypes will pave the way for more complex future projects looking at move to more complex interventions, such as valve turning and decommissioning work in a later phase. One of the challenges is to be able to show that human interaction with the autonomous system will be intuitive to an appropriately qualified user and that there should be no surprises in the behaviour of the vessel. The project foundations and technologies can also be exploited in other domains including space, air and mining.
The project commenced January 2019 and will complete after a series of developments and trials in early 2021. It is anticipated that demonstrations will be given to target customers and where applicable, the regulators. In all cases, we expect to develop a robust safety argument and be able to show that the system can behave autonomously when needed and still be safe.
