Offshore staff
STAVANGER, Norway – Statoil and Kongsberg Maritime have signed an agreement with Eelume to accelerate development of new technology top cut costs related to subsea inspection, maintenance, and repair operations.
Norwegian institutes NTNU and Sintef have conducted research on snake robotics for more than 10 years. Eelume, and NTNU spin-off is now developing a disruptive solution for underwater inspection and maintenance in the form of a swimming robot.
This would perform inspection and light intervention jobs on the seafloor, reducing the need to bring in large and expensive vessels. The Eelume robot’s slender and flexible body is designed to move around confined areas that are difficult to access with existing technology.
Robots will be permanently installed on the seafloor and will perform planned or on-demand inspections and interventions. According to Kongsberg, the technology can be deployed on existing and new fields for tasks such as visual inspection, cleaning, and adjusting valves and chokes.
These jobs account for much of the typical subsea inspection and intervention spend.
04/18/2016
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