Danish submarine could serve the offshore industry in the 21st century
A Danish research and manufacturing company has produced a fully autonomous robot submarine with the assistance of the European Commission's programme for marine science and technologies (MAST). The company, Maridan A/S, presented the full-scale prototype of its autonomous underwater vehicle - the 'AUV MARIDAN 600' submarine - at the OI2000 event in Brighton, UK, early in March. The company won funds from the European Commission's Fourth RTD Framework Programme for their original research. The project aimed to address the offshore industry's ever growing demand for underwater survey and inspection kit of high quality, efficiency, reliability and flexibility - at a reasonable cost. AUV MARIDAN 600 is designed to operate at depths up to 600 metres and is the Danish company's first commercial vehicle. The prototypes MARIUS (1991 - 1993) and MARTIN (1994-1997) successfully completed more than 1000km in sea trials. Promising results from these studies led the researchers to the Maridan company in 1993 to focus on AUVs as its unique product. 'The European research programme has been the basis for creating outstanding AUV technology in Europe', says Jens Pind, managing director of Maridan A/S. MARIDAN 600 will be pre-programmed to follow survey routes using its high accuracy navigation system, and will store the data it gathers during its voyage on its onboard computers. After completion of the survey the vehicle must be recovered to change the battery and transfer data. It is capable of completing missions over 60 to 120 km range in 12 to 24 hours, depending on the type of battery it is fitted with.