Ocean Aero

TRANSFORMATIONAL

AUTONOMOUS TECHNOLOGY

Ocean Aero has created the world’s first, and only, environmentally powered Autonomous Underwater and Surface Vehicle (AUSV), the TRITON. It collects data both above and below the ocean’s surface and can relay it from anywhere. The company designed and built the innovative TRITON and its communication platform, offering both ready-to-deploy packages and custom payloads for an array of applications. Hannah Barnett spoke to CEO Kevin Decker, Chief of Staff Keith Blystone and Marketing Director Anastasia Flaherty to find out more.

The TRITON, sailing autonomously.

The time for AUSVs is now and Ocean Aero has seized the innovation potential. Commercially active for not much more than two years, the company has seen a staggering growth rate of over 100% per year. With 75 staff situated in Gulfport, Mississippi, it is set to open brandnew headquarters and a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility of 67,000 square feet in the summer of 2023.

As Kevin Decker, CEO at Ocean Aero, pointed out, autonomous systems offer several core value propositions. The first is a reduction of costs, “ranging from fuel, to insurance, to dispatching human beings on boats, to the charter and the depreciation of those vehicles in the first place,” as he put it. The second is an increase in safety. Whether that means colder, stormier or simply more remote environments, being able to send robots to the far reaches of the ocean is a safer proposition.

“The third is that an autonomous vessel enables you to have a more ubiquitous presence,” Mr Decker continued, “and to collect a larger volume of data because you can cover more places with the same budget, using smaller, more agile vehicles to get out there.”

Then there is the value added by the removal of human error. “The data can be more accessible and of higher quality if you reduce reliance on manual human efforts. This is the promise of autonomous vehicles,” said Mr Decker. “No one is suggesting that we replace humans altogether, but in general these tools augment people who are in the ocean anyway, in command centres. And this is helping to give those human operators more data, faster and easier, so that they can make better decisions. The machines are tools.”

The TRITON

Key among these tools is the TRITON, the world's only dual-modality, surface and subsurface vehicle in one platform. “The

Aerial view of the TRITON’s solar panel exterior. The TRITON is fully wind and solar powered. With 470 watts of charging capacity per hour, the TRITON can recharge itself and power its payloads persistently for long-term autonomous missions.

The TRITON swimming below the surface and acting as a submarine for unparalleled ocean data collection and threat evasion.

TRITON is literally a sailboat that transforms into a submarine and it’s the only thing like it in the world,” said Mr Decker.

The TRITION is wind and solar powered and fully autonomous. This autonomy allows for extended deployment and broad scope mission execution in remote ocean domains for long periods of time. Intelligent software manages the TRITON, so users can focus on analysis, mission planning and other valuable tasks.

The TRITON is an excellent tool for the oil and gas industry, because it can swim to

an area with a suspected problem fully equipped with a variety of different diagnostic payloads. These payloads include fluorometers and water sampling units to determine levels of oil present in the water. The TRITON’s payload bay is agnostic and can be equipped with any array of custom payloads to serve its desired function and mission set. Data is then collected and sent back to the operator to help them verify the issue.

As Anastasia Flaherty, Marketing Director, explained: “One of the most significant and distinguishing features of the TRITON is that it’s fully wind and solar powered: it’s a Net Zero vehicle. In a time when there's so much pressure nationally and globally on clean energy, there's a spotlight on oil and gas. There are questions about how operations are being shifted to be more sustainable and cleaner. The TRITON is a pioneering part of that process. It can detect leaks, playing a big part in helping the environment in that sense, but on top of that, the TRITON itself operates cleanly.”

The value added

As well as being energy efficient, the TRITON can also help a company save money, particularly during storms and their aftermath, as Chief of Staff Keith Blystone explained: “Every day a platform is down, it is estimated to lose, on average, a million dollars of rev enue. Our value proposition is that we’ll have the TRITON swim out there prior to a hurricane and have it dive and hold position while the hurricane comes through. It can hold position up to eight days if you want it to.”

The TRITON, offshore in Gulfport MS, lowers its wing to prepare for diving.

The TRITON turns to avoid the oncoming boat from which it is being photographed; obstacle avoidance programming allows the TRITON to recognise obstacles and change course autonomously.

The TRITON, keeping watch on a foggy Gulfport morning. Radar technology allows full situational awareness in all weather conditions.

Once the hurricane passes, the TRITON reemerges. It is equipped with pan-tilt-zoom cameras and other sensory equipment, to take visual inspections and upload that information back via satellite communications.

“We're making big strides in improving the communications gateway,” Mr Blystone continued. “It can be difficult when you’re gathering data out in the Gulf to send it back to shore. Satellite communications are good, in that they are available everywhere. But they have low data transfer rates, making it difficult and costly to send still images or video. And there are not a lot of other options.”

To address this, Ocean Aero have partnered with Silvus Technologies to improve high data transfer back to a shoreside location in Houston, Texas. “It’s really stepping up communications technology,” Mr Blystone said, “from what was possible even three to five years ago. And that means faster decision making in the Gulf.”

Ocean Aero sees valuable applications in leak detection and verification utilising fluorometers and water sampling, as well as pipeline inspection utilising side-scan sonar.

The company is also working closely with Hess Corporation. “They are our big partner here in oil and gas. They've been a phenomenal group to collaborate with, we have been working together for the last two years,” said Mr Blystone.

The future

Mr Decker was confident about the TRITON’s place in the oil and gas industry of the immediate future. He saw improvement in both the hardware and software of the machine as inevitable.

The Ocean Aero team.

The TRITON dives to observe a submerged wreck.

“Adding more sophisticated payloads will mean we can execute more applications,” he said. “It doesn't mean we have to build an entirely new TRITON, it just means we need to modify the payloads. And I think the more that we can tailor those packages, the better off our customers will be.

“Add to that, the advancement of Artificial Intelligence: this will enable us to do things like swarm the vehicles autonomously together in fleets. The operator can program each TRITON for a specific mission, and the machines will figure out how to execute these missions alongside each other and react to environmental conditions by themselves.”

Though this is an industry with vast potential, any emerging and evolving business has challenges. Mr Decker identified the issue of developing a more efficient battery management system as payloads increase, because “payloads use power.”

In general, though, the CEO remained excited about what he saw as the potential to change the world at Ocean Aero’s fingertips. “It's not like we're building pen and paper here,” Mr Decker enthused. “We're doing something for the future, that eventually all of humanity will benefit from. Something that is the synthesis of multiple advancements and disciplines. Science has really jumped forward. You couldn't do this five years ago, but we can do it now.” n

Kevin Decker giving an address to the company.