Norway's maritime tech specialist, Kongsberg Maritime, has secured a delivery contract with an undisclosed partner for a HUGIN Endurance AUV System.
HUGIN Endurance is a long-range autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) designed for shore-to-shore operations. It is the largest member of the HUGIN family of AUVs measuring approximately 11 meters in length, with a diameter of 1.2 meters and weighing around 7,000 kilograms.
"Since the launch in 2021, HUGIN Endurance has garnered interest from the defense sector and from commercial operators, with a focus on reducing both the carbon footprint and cost of survey campaigns. The most obvious capability is the ability to operate from shore with unrivalled area coverage," KongsbergMaritime said.
Kongsber Maritime says that even though the vehicle is bigger, it has many of the same proven, commercial-off-the-shelf features as the rest of the HUGIN line.
The key changes include in-mission processing and data handling, plus enhanced fault management for autonomous missions. A system of graceful degradation has been implemented, providing redundancy and resilience for key safety capabilities, Kongsberg Maritime said.
“HUGIN Endurance pushes the boundaries for autonomous over-the-horizon operations of an AUV” said Richard Mills, Vice President of Marine Robotics Sales. “It has taken more than 30 years of hard-won experience to enable us to deliver this capability in such a short time. It builds on the proven capabilities of HUGIN and HUGIN Superior, and together with the recently launched HUGIN Edge demonstrates the art of the possible with AUVs.”