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Inspection / In service, six hulls

Built to work within a metre of something expensive without touching it.

PLATE 151:20
Standoff hold
± 4 cm
Depth rating
3,000 m
Current tolerance
3.0 kn

SOUNDER is the hull that goes where a mistake is costly. Risers, manifolds, tether management frames, anything where the difference between a clean inspection and an incident is a metre of standoff held in a three knot cross current.

It runs tethered by default and untethered when the tether itself is the risk. The frame is open, so a snagged line can be cut free without losing the vehicle, and every thruster can be swapped on deck in under fifteen minutes.

Station keeping is the whole product. It will hold a position against current and its own thruster wash while the cameras do slow work, and it will back off on its own if the standoff closes past tolerance. That last behaviour is not optional and cannot be overridden from the surface.

Sensor stack

  • Stereo camera pair, 4K
  • Cathodic protection probe
  • Multibeam imaging sonar
  • Ultrasonic thickness gauge
  • Laser scaling array

Representative return, single ping

Full specification

SOUNDER, as built

Frame1.60 × 1.05 × 0.95 m
Dry mass540 kg
Thrusters8, vectored
Payload capacity70 kg
TetherOptional, 3,500 m
Energy28 kWh, or through-tether
Lighting6 × 18,000 lm
ManipulatorFive function, optional
NavigationDoppler and acoustic transponder
Turnaround90 min deck to deck

Flown on

Campaigns using this hull

Other hulls

Deployment

SOUNDER deploys from two ports with a 90 min deck to deck turnaround. Tell us the depth and the question and we will tell you whether this is the right hull.