Kongsberg Maritime launches the next generation of its advanced HUGIN Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV), the company announced with a press release.
Named HUGIN Endurance, the new AUV boosts operational duration to approximately 15 days, enabling comprehensive survey and inspection missions far from shore.
This longevity allows HUGIN Endurance to undertake extensive missions without the support of a mothership. Shore-to-Shore operations offer the opportunity to reduce the carbon footprint for commercial activities and yet retain unrivaled data resolution and accuracy. With this in mind, KONGSBERG has added its Maritime Broadband Radio (MBR) communications system to HUGIN Endurance’s payload. MBR allows it to surface and share large quantities of data swiftly with any suitably equipped installation, such as another vessel, shore station, or a wind turbine fitted with an MBR antenna.
For defense applications, HUGIN Endurance makes persistence a reality. Whether it is a long-range military survey, wide-area mine detection, classification, identification, or even patrolling a chokepoint listening for submarines, this new extended range capability offers new solutions to existing and future challenges.
HUGIN AUVs already set the standard for autonomous underwater operations thanks to their rugged reliability and accurate, cutting-edge sensor payloads. The HUGIN Endurance is no exception; it can be equipped with a wide array of sensors, including the high-resolution KONGSBERG HiSAS synthetic aperture sonar, a wide swath multibeam echosounder, sub-bottom profiler, and magnetometer, together with other sensors to detect parameters such as methane, current, and turbidity.
This proven portfolio of hydroacoustic sensors, communications, and other technologies – teamed with unparalleled operational range – ensures that HUGIN Endurance is well equipped for advanced situational awareness scanning and mapping/inspection activities for far-field applications such as offshore wind farms. It also delivers significant sustainability benefits, not only when contrasted with conducting operations from surface vessels but also with other AUV operations. The reduction in the need for surface support further diminishes the environmental footprint.
“We are proud to launch HUGIN Endurance, which represents a step-change in AUV operations,” says Richard Mills, Vice President of Marine Robotics Sales, Kongsberg Maritime. “Teaming long endurance with large area coverage capabilities allows a single AUV to map areas up to 1,100 square kilometers in a single mission – a target impossible until now. With its long-range capability and advanced communications, HUGIN Endurance sets a new standard for autonomous subsea mapping and inspection, yielding unmatched operational flexibility, efficiency, and sustainability.”
