Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) Market
Although several hundred Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) have been produced to date, AUVs are still regarded as a relatively new technology. Some analysts say that they have the potential to ‘change the game’ in some areas of underwater operations. Considerable investments by research institutes, manufacturers and the military are resulting in AUVs becoming increasing accepted in some of key roles where they have been shown to be more effective than previous technology.
A recent report identifies three significant growth markets for AUVS, namely oil & gas, research and military applications. The report covers the period from 2008-17 and examines the market drivers and prospects in each of the main application sectors. It identifies a “most likely” market scenario being valued at $1.8 billion with the upside market potential valued at over $3.5 billion.
Marport and Canada’s with the National Research Council of Canada’s Institute for Ocean Technology (NRC-IOT) are co-developing a compact AUV designed for search and survey applications. The AUV is code-named SQX1 and is a hydrodynamically stable platform designed for reliable performance and low life-cycle cost. The vehicle’s dual-pod design enables exceptional stability and its position and velocity controllers are tuned for near-hovering capabilities. SQX1 will be equipped with Marport’s Software Defined Sonar (SDS) platform – which will include advanced sensors, sounders and imaging sonar. The payload architecture can also be configured to include a wide variety of standard and/or custom sensors to meet unique subsea mission requirements.
The development of the vehicle is progressing very well and Marport expects to be conducting open water sea trials during this coming summer.
Work Class ROV Market Expected to Grow to Over $2 Billion Per Year
A Triton XLX work-class ROV manufactured by Perry Slingsby Systems
Since 2003, expenditures on work-class ROVs (Remotely Operated Vehicles) have more than tripled. The findings of a new market study “The World ROV Market Report 2008-12″ from energy analysts Douglas-Westwood Ltd (DWL) project further strong growth is expected over the next five years – leading to an annual market of some $2.4 billion per year by 2012. The majority of growth is expected from the offshore oil & gas industry as ROVs have become an essential part of offshore exploration and production.
Around a third of world oil & gas production came from offshore in 2008; a figure which will increase as rising oil price rises will enable some offshore fields, particularly in deepwater, to become economically viable. Also many onshore fields have now matured and therefore unlikely to see any significant increases in production. As such, any increase in offshore activity has a direct impact on the demand for ROV systems.
DWL estimates that, over the next five years, over 650 new work-class ROVs will be required to keep up with increased demand and attrition of the current fleet. The continued growth in the offshore industry will increase the amount of ROV operations during the 2008- 2012 period as the high levels of drilling activity and increasing installations of subsea wells, pipelines, control cables and other seabed hardware, all require the use of work-class ROVs. Moreover, this is increasingly happening in water depths beyond the economic reach of manned intervention.
The growth in the ROV market bodes well for Marport’s underwater sensing instrumentation – including DataSquid® – a new multi-function Attitude Heading Reference Sensor system that we plan to introduce to the ROV market during 1Q’09.
