Kongsberg Maritime and Statoil have signed an settlement with Eelume, a Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) spin-off firm, to develop snake-like swimming robots for subsea inspection and lightweight intervention.

NTNU and Sintef have carried out analysis on snake robotics for greater than 10 years. Eelume is now growing a disruptive resolution for underwater inspection and upkeep within the type of a swimming robotic. The goal of the collaboration is to speed up new expertise in hopes of considerably lowering prices associated to subsea inspection, upkeep and restore operations.

“Eelume is an effective instance of how new expertise and innovation contributes to price discount. Instead of utilizing massive and costly vessels for small jobs, we now introduce a versatile robotic performing as a self going janitor on the seabed. To help smaller firms in bringing new expertise to the market is a vital a part of our analysis portfolio», says Statoil’ s Chief expertise officer Elisabeth Birkeland Kvalheim.

The concept is to let robots do inspection and lightweight intervention jobs on the seabed, lowering using massive and costly vessels.

With its snake-like kind, the slender and versatile physique of the robotic may present entry to confined areas which might be troublesome to entry with present expertise.

The robots will probably be completely put in on the seabed and can carry out deliberate and on-demand inspections and interventions.

The resolution could be put in on each present and new fields the place typical jobs embody visible inspection, cleansing, and adjusting valves and chokes. These jobs account for a big a part of the overall subsea inspection and intervention spend.

Below is an animation displaying how the robots will function:

“With our unique expertise in the field of snake robotics Eelume is the first company in the world to bring these amazing robots into an industrial setting. Now we take the step from academia and into the commercial world to secure our place in the new and exciting subsea intervention landscape,” says Pål Liljebäck, CTO Eelume

“This partnership offers the chance to bring radical technology to the market, not just in what the Eelume robot can do, but how it does it,” says Bjørn Jalving, Executive Vice President Subsea Division at Kongsberg Maritime. “It is a new tool that will enable operators to realise large scale cost savings by introducing new ways of conducting routine tasks and helping to prevent unscheduled shutdowns by reacting instantly when required.”