Robots for Marine Renewable Energy Plants Maintenance and Surveying

The purpose of my research is to investigate the design of autonomous vehicles for deployment in rough seas, delving into the underlying electronics and hardware design which is fundamental to the operation of the vehicle. I intend to conduct research which will assist in the drive to create underwater vehicles that can manoeuvre and operate in daunting environments where current technologies do not yet have the capabilities of successfully venturing, allowing maintenance to be carried out in a broader spectrum of conditions.

With operations in offshore deep sea oil and gas extraction particularly becoming more complex, the need for automated vehicles for maintenance and inspection is growing substantially. My aim will be to develop new or adapt current technologies that can manage and counteract the disturbances the vehicle will see in the unpredictable subsea environment, therefore reducing the limitations of operations that current Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROV's) and Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV's) are subject to. The capabilities of modern ROV's and AUV's are very much dependent on weather conditions; this is the problem I intend to tackle with my research and make substantial progress in developing solutions to widen the conditions these vehicles are capable of tackling.

Approaches to the challenge could involve possibly adapting current integrated circuit designs for custom use, which could speed up the processing of information and possibly advance the predictive ability of the system; this would allow the vehicle to counteract disturbances more effectively. A mechanical based approach would be to obstruct the movement of the vehicle through restraints, allowing maintenance/inspection to be conducted with minimal disturbances in reference to position. Another control-based approach may involve sensing disturbances before they occur, by being able to predict accurately how the vehicle would be affected; this would be more complex as the sea is a naturally chaotic environment but using a combination of advanced sensors and machine learning it then a much more possible solution.

This research is critical if the industry is to transition to fully automated inspection and maintenance of offshore technologies, which implies the reduction of cost of maintenance in the long term thus also implying lower cost per watt of energy produced; the need to place humans in extremely dangerous positions would also be removed therefore improving the safety of such operations.