Ship&Offshore | Ausgabe 06/2016
Snake-like robot for subsea inspections and maintenance
Research project | Kongsberg Maritime and Statoil have signed an agreement with Eelume, a spin-off company of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), to accelerate a new technology that the Norwegian companies say will significantly cut the costs of subsea inspections, maintenance and repairs. NTNU and the Norway-based independent research organisation SINTEF have conducted research on snake robotics for more than ten years. Eelume is now developing a disruptive solution for underwater inspection and maintenance in the form of a swimming robot. The idea is to let these robots do inspection and light intervention jobs on the seabed, reducing the use of large and expensive vessels.