New milestone for HUGIN Endurance Autonomous Underwater Vehicle

The eight-ton, 40ft Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) is said to have operated without any human interaction or external navigation after receiving a final navigation update from a pre-deployed transponder 10 hours into its dive.

This mission, conducted at depths ranging from 50m to 3400m, returned with a position error of approximately 0.02 per cent of total distance travelled.

“The mission we’ve just completed validates the design specifications of the system and provides proof that our HUGIN autonomy framework is fully capable of performing complex multi-day missions with no human interaction. We are extremely excited about the vast operational capabilities we can bring to our customers with HUGIN Endurance”, Kongsberg's Rich Patterson, vice president of sales, Uncrewed Platforms Division, said in a statement.

The mission plan was designed to validate the design specifications of the AUV and put the vehicle through its paces in a real-world environment.

The mission consisted of straight-line transits spanning 60-300nm legs and survey areas. The survey areas covered 36nm2 with very high-resolution synthetic aperture sonar (SAS) imagery and bathymetry, using Kongsberg’s HISAS 1032 Dual Rx, in under 48 hours. Camera imagery and laser profiling data was also collected at altitudes down to 9m.

As the newest member of the HUGIN AUV family,  HUGIN Endurance enables unsupervised shore-to-shore operations over long ranges up to 1200nm. According to Kongsberg Discovery, the vessel can be configured with a range of sensors focused on mission capabilities and situational awareness including hydro-acoustic instruments for mapping and inspection. The company added that underwater and surface awareness sensors are used for autonomous decision making.

“The success of this mission proves HUGIN Endurance’s shore-to-shore operational capability. Removing the need for a surface ship provides a huge savings to our customers, in both time and resources. We are proud of our exceptional team that has been working very hard to add this capability to our AUV portfolio,” said Espen Henriksen, executive vice president, Uncrewed Platforms Division.