Good News

Welcome to this second edition of the Unmanned Systems special of Hydro International. Our focus is on Autonomous Unmanned Vehicles, Remotely Operated Vehicles and Unmanned Surface Vehicles and we have been collecting an array of articles in this special to help you stay up to date with all the developments in this promising sector of our industry. First of all, we interviewed Dan Hook, managing director of ASV Ltd. (UK) on page 8. Hook is a pioneer in the world of autonomous surface vehicles and shares his views on what the future will hold for autonomous surface vehicles. He sees operating safely over the horizon and beyond the line of sight from a support vessel as one of the major developments in the nearby future. At the same time Hook identifies the biggest challenges in being able to operate these vehicles beyond the line of sight and the solutions to solve them: better communication for collision detections and avoidance. In the feature article Ocius Technology: Launch of a Next-generation Wind-powered USV by Robert Dane on page 20 a new form of propulsion is explored and explained. This new form of propulsion is inspired by the way the Australian bluebottle jellyfish swims off the East coast waters down under. In the feature article Underwater Communications and the Level of Autonomy of AUVs by Stefania Giodini on page 16 the authors focus on different and better ways of underwater communication that will increase deployment of AUVs. Joost Boers, editorial manager at Hydro International gives a clear overview of trends and developments in the world of ROVs in his article Many Tasks in Many Shapes and Sizes on page 32. And of course there’s more: articles, news and businesses presenting themselves in this Unmanned Systems special. The sector of Unmanned Systems is a promising one, as I already mentioned. A report on the World Global AUV market by market research organization Douglas Westwood predicts a growth of the total AUV fleet of 42% between 2014 and 2018. And the total of ROV operations expenditure, according to Douglas Westwood, is forecasted at 9.7 billion USD up to 2017. That is an increase of 80%. It is surely not a bad place to be in to these days. Half of the AUV demand comes from the military sector, but deepwater oil & gas activities, environmental sensing and research mapping are also driving growth, says Douglas Westwood. Regions like Latin America and Africa are growth areas with increasing market share, where North America is still taking up the largest chunk of the market: 64% - slowly going down to 60% due to the growth in aforementioned regions. The investments in the sector are mirroring those of the land-based ‘drone’ sector. That sector is booming and therefore the similarity in the AUV sector is good news!