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AUVs have clear economic benefits compared to towed systems.
The elimination of line turns makes a deepwater AUV operation
four times more efficient than a towed system. More importantly,
the data quality is dramatically improved because an AUV can
follow the bottom and thus eliminated data holidays that result
from changes in topography.
The long-term economic benefit of AUVs will come from eliminating
the need for a surface support vessel. Racal is already taking
the first steps in this direction by operating two AUVs from
one survey ship, thus doubling the productivity.
Bluefin has the navigation technology and the artificial intelligence
to take this one step further and eliminate the surface ship
altogether. This will be the true AUV revolution and will
ultimately result in the complete automation of the offshore
survey industry. This paradigm shifting technology will be
extremely disruptive and will dramatically favor the survey
companies that get this right.
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