More than a thousand types of Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs) are in use today worldwide, and yearly turnover for their manufacturers is estimated at several hundred million US dollars. The majority of these vehicles are commercially
operated ROVs designed to perform survey, inspection, construction, repair and intervention tasks at water depths of less than 1,000 metres, the depth at which most offshore operations take place.

Generally speaking, ROVs whereby the umbilical cable carries both power and telemetry between vehicle and surface unit. The umbilical is generally the most limiting factor in an ROV, and this item is dealt with separately in the present product survey.
Most ROV inspection packages deliver acoustic technology (sonar) and visual technology (video and still photography), but also remote-sensing equipment, caesium magnetometers, high-resolution digital side-scan sonar system, and other inspection sensors. These provide a clear picture of seabed conditions and manmade structures such as pipelines, platforms, dams, wrecks etc., enabling safer, more precise installation and intervention, along with effective and reliable observation, monitoring
and IRM.

As a requested follow-up to the product survey on micro/mini ROVs published in our September 2005 issue, we now focus on their bigger brothers: inspection/intervention ROVs. These are used not only in the oil & gas exploration industry, but are
also deployable for mine countermeasure applications, environmental and fisheries research, dredging and land reclamation, marine archaeology, port security, nuclear plant inspection, diver assistance, and even the leisure/entertainment market. But first we consider this type of ROV in its role as a versatile tool for hydrographic-inspection applications, and as such have limited the scope of this Product Survey to these vehicles.

Also, we are fully aware of the wide range of vehicles presently on the market and have requested ROV manufacturers to focus on hydrographic aspects of the ROVs only. Further, we have limited ourselves to the type of ROV that is reasonably ‘portable’, and to a maximum of just two products per manufacturer. We realise that this will not give the reader a complete overview of all available vehicles, but it will in any case offer an indication what is available for the hydrographic survey / inspection /
intervention industry.

Participating suppliers:

• HydroSupport: DiveAgent
• nautec SRL: Sirius, Perseus, Aries
• Outland Technology: Outland 1000
• Schilling Robotics: LT
• SeaBotix: LBV150S, LBV300, LBV300-6
• SMD Hydrovision: Quark, Quasar, Quantum