Kraken Robotics has through its wholly-owned subsidiary, entered into a strategic partnership with Avitas Systems, a GE Venture.
The companies will integrate autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), acoustic and laser sensor technology and artificial intelligence-based navigation software into subsea inspection solutions for the oil and gas, offshore renewable energy, and shipping industries.
The announcement was made during GE’s Mind + Machines event in San Francisco, California.
“Bridging Kraken’s cost-effective technologies with our autonomy, state-of-the-art platform, and domain knowledge allows us to commercialize efficient solutions tailored to the oil and gas industry’s specific needs,” said Brad Tomer , vice president of operations at Avitas Systems. “We look forward to developing complex solutions that offshore assets in challenging ocean conditions require.”
Karl Kenny , Kraken’s cresident and CEO, added: “Integrating our technologies with Avitas Systems will significantly enhance subsea asset management and provide improved safety, reduced costs and actionable intelligence for operators. We look forward to announcing our first contract during 4Q 2017.”
Avitas Systems will integrate Kraken’s technologies into an autonomous subsea inspection system. The data from this inspection will be uploaded into a platform that includes data ingestion, automatic defect recognition, predictive analytics and a cloud-based visualization portal for oil and gas and offshore energy customers.
The partnership expands capabilities for inspections of ship and FPSO hulls, underwater production fields, subsea pipelines and cables and offshore wind farm assets.
Avitas Systems will also use sonar technology and navigational software from Kraken Robotics to optimize robots’ abilities to follow supervisory commands, track pipeline or subsea field positioning with AI-powered swim paths and identify priority areas for inspection.