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Autonomous Robotics Sub Sea Cage

Eadon Consulting were approached by Autonomous Robotics to assist with the concept design of an offshore deployment and recovery system for their new ‘flying nodes’. The garage requirements were to have a capability to hold and deploy up to 72 nodes at a rate of 1 every 75 seconds.

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Client

Autonomous Robotics

The pioneering project looks at developing a new and more efficient method of collecting ocean bottom seismic data. Historically these surveys, facilitated by the existing cable node systems, have been slow and costly, despite producing high quality seismic data. Recent strides in the sector have made it clear that a more operationally efficient solution is required to reflect the growth within the industry overall.

Our brief was to produce an innovative concept design for a subsea cage (ROV) which had the ability to deploy and collect autonomous ‘flying nodes’. The concept had numerous, novel design features which utilised technical solutions from other industries to meet the required deployment and retrieval rate. Borrowing from our existing ROV Garage design experience, our engineers began to develop a concept which focused on the most timely way in which to release and subsequently capture the autonomous nodes.

There were several points of consideration to be taken into account, one of which was the underwater setting that the ROV would work in. The equipment design had to consider the fact that the mechanisms had to be simple enough to endure the marine environment but still be fit for purpose. The subsea cage design would also need to work to tight time constraints to significantly improve node deployment efficiency and also be able to allow for the unusual shape of the new node design.