I-AUV docking and intervention in a subsea panel

TLDR

Commercially available AUVs are mainly used for survey missions, but emerging applications such as maintenance of permanent underwater structures and recovery of benthic stations require intervention capabilities that are currently performed by manned submersibles or ROVs with teleoperated arms. The study proposes a subsea panel docking and intervention procedure within the TRITON Spanish funded project. The lightweight I‑AUV Girona 500 autonomously docks into a subsea panel via a funnel‑based passive method and then uses a camera‑guided fixed‑based manipulator to operate a valve and connector, with the paper detailing the docking, manipulation techniques and panel design.

Abstract

While commercially available autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are routinely used in survey missions, a new set of applications exist which clearly demand intervention capabilities: the maintenance of permanent underwater structures as well as the recovery of benthic stations or black-boxes are a few of them. These tasks are addressed nowadays using manned submersibles or work-class remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), equipped with teleoperated arms under human supervision. In the context of the TRITON Spanish funded project, a subsea panel docking and an intervention procedure are proposed. The light-weight intervention AUV (I-AUV) Girona 500 is used to autonomously dock into a subsea panel using a funnel-based docking method for passive accommodation. Once docked, an autonomous fixed-based manipulation system, which uses feedback from a digital camera, is used to turn a valve and plug/unplug a connector. The paper presents the techniques used for the autonomous docking and manipulation as well as how the adapted subsea panel has been designed to facilitate such operations.