Norway’s record-smashing giant underwater drone swims 3400m deep autonomously

A giant underwater drone in Norway has set a record by swimming 3400m deep autonomously in a multi-week long mission.

The milestone was recorded during the Norwegian firm Kongsberg’s development testing of the Hugin Endurance Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV).

The firm’s newest AUV in the Hugin family, the Endurance allows long-range, independent shore-to-shore operations.

“After receiving a final navigation update from a pre-deployed transponder 10 hours into the dive, the 8-ton, 40 ft, AUV operated completely independent of all human interaction and with no external navigation aiding for the duration of the sortie,” said the firm in a statement .

The mission covered depths between 50m and 3,400m, successfully reaching the expected range of 1,200 nautical miles. Notably, the Hugin Endurance returned with a position error of only 0.02 percent of the total distance traveled.

Advanced surveying

Hugin Endurance is a fully self-sufficient system that can function for prolonged periods of time without requiring human assistance.

Endurance is the largest version in its free-swimming Hugin AUV range. They offer optimised hydrodynamics, great manoeuvrability and high accuracy of stabilisation.

The underwater drone can be equipped with various sensors designed for mission capabilities and situational awareness. These include reliable hydro-acoustic tools for mapping and inspections, such as Kongsberg’s HISAS synthetic aperture sonars and EM multibeam systems. Both underwater and surface sensors support autonomous decision-making.

According to the firm, Endurance surpasses commercial offers for high-quality data collection because of cutting-edge technologies like the newest generation of pressure-tolerant Li-ion batteries, sensor redundancy, in-mission processing, and the Sunstone inertial navigation system with HISAS micro navigation.

Hugin Endurance is a significant advancement in shore-to-shore operations for commercial surveying. It is outfitted to manage unforeseen situations, transition to redundant operation modes, and securely connect with remote operating centers.

Key features include a low environmental impact and the ability to operate continuously between shores for up to 15 days. It can conduct unsupervised geophysical surveys over a range of 1,367 miles (2,200 kilometers) and map an area of 424m² (1,100 km²) using advanced sonar technology.

The system works at depths of up to 6,000 meters and includes top navigation tools. It can be launched and retrieved from shore or any available ship.

Shore-to-shore validation

The intricate mission plan was created to verify the AUV ‘s design criteria and test the vehicle in an actual setting. The mission involved survey areas and straight-line transits with legs ranging from 60 to 300 nm.

Using Kongsberg’s HISAS 1032 Dual Rx, the survey areas were covered in less than 48 hours with very high-resolution synthetic aperture sonar (SAS) imagery and bathymetry covering 36 nm². At heights as low as 9 meters, data from laser profiling and camera pictures were also gathered.

“The success of this mission proves HUGIN Endurance’s shore-to-shore operational capability. Removing the need for a surface ship provides a huge savings to our customers, in both time and resources,” said the firm.

Kongsberg claims that the recently completed mission confirms the system’s design specifications and demonstrates that the Hugin autonomy framework can handle complex, multi-day missions without human intervention.