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Live diving with the A.IKANBILIS Hovering AUV

We spent some time at the Digital Ocean Lab (DOL) in the Baltic Sea together with Fraunhofer Smart Ocean Technologies (SOT) earlier this month, where among other things, we had the opportunity to test out some of our ongoing R&D work on the A.IKANBILIS HAUV (Hovering Autonomous Underwater Vehicle) during live dive testing.


While A.IKANBILIS is already one of, if not the most intelligent underwater platform in the world, the Subsea Europe Services R&D team continues to develop its capabilities to ensure its ability to unlock innovative new workflows and process automations for underwater inspection and maritime security applications.


The focus of the test dives in March was automatic route planning and execution above and under water, which included optimising the launch and recovery process of the HAUV and improving the platform’s integral object recognition and locating skills, to the point that we are now able to perform search missions and georeference objects at any given coordinates.

Professionals on a boat recovering a small marine robot used in underwater inspection applications
Some of the work at the Digital Ocean Lab focused on the launch and recovery workflow for the A.IKANBILIS

“Fraunhofer SOT’s Digital Ocean Lab infrastructure is the ideal testing location for our autonomous fleet,” said Dr. Frank Niemeyer, Head of R&D, Subsea Europe Services. “Our recent A.IKANBILIS dives there demonstrated how far ahead our Hovering AUV is in terms of its ability to operate self sufficiently while providing high quality data with the minimum of human intervention according to its mission parameters.”


The video below shows the A.IKANBILIS in action between two test runs together with a second ROV system from Fraunhofer in the Digital Ocean Lab. The measurement setup is clearly visible.


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