Avitas Systems with Kraken to advance subsea robotic inspection

The companies will integrate Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs), acoustic and laser sensor technology and AI-based navigation software into subsea inspection solutions for the oil and gas, offshore renewable energy, and shipping industries. "Bridging Kraken's cost-effective technologies with our autonomy, state-of-the-art platform, and domain knowledge allows us to commercialize efficient solutions tailored to the oil and gas industry's specific needs," said Brad Tomer, Vice President of Operations at Avitas Systems, who attended GE's Minds + Machines event in San Francisco. "We look forward to developing complex solutions that offshore assets in challenging ocean conditions require." Karl Kenny, Kraken's President and CEO, added, "Integrating our technologies with Avitas Systems will significantly enhance subsea asset management and provide improved safety, reduced costs and actionable intelligence for operators. We look forward to announcing our first contract during 4Q 2017." Routine subsea inspections can be slow and costly and often include manual visual inspection with large margins of error. Utilising enhanced imaging technology and inspection solutions will improve the jobs of inspectors and increase safety, accuracy, speed, cost efficiency and asset longevity. Avitas Systems will be able to complete subsea inspection with reduced cost and time, and operational footprint. Kraken Robotics brings a broad range of cost efficient AUV technologies, such as underwater sensors, pressure tolerant batteries, thrusters and control electronics. Avitas Systems will integrate these technologies into an autonomous subsea inspection system. The data from this inspection will be uploaded into a platform that includes robust data ingestion, automatic defect recognition, predictive analytics and a cloud-based visualization portal for oil and gas and offshore energy customers. Avitas Systems will also use sonar technology and navigational software from Kraken Robotics to optimise robots' abilities to follow supervisory commands, track pipeline or subsea field positioning with AI-powered swim paths and identify priority areas for inspection.