Autonomous Underwater Vehicles for Marine Energies Design Group

Reducing the planning and maintenance costs of offshore farms and other infrastructures and obtaining scientific data requires:

• ​Sea bed characterisation studies for which a large number of parameters are required, whereby obtaining such data is time consuming and costly in terms of money and human resources.
• Automating the servicing and maintenance of the submerged structures and their environment.

This project aims to share knowledge of the existing scientific-technological challenges with the academic fields and business in order to advance the technology required in the development of underwater robots. Involving the educational field to create a critical mass of stakeholders interested in developing robotic solutions to operate in the marine environment.

Applicability/impact of the results:
The project is aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals 2030 (SDG) 7 and 14. More specifically, with “Target 7.2” (Increase the share of renewable energy) as it is focused on the use of underwater robots in renewable marine energy installation and maintenance tasks and with “Target 14.a”, devoted to increasing scientific knowledge, developing research capacity and transferring marine technology.

Furthermore, this project will use real cases to illustrate the capacity of underwater robots to collect marine data (oceanographic, meteorological, geological, biological or chemical) and the possible uses of this data, which will enable students to apply this training in tasks like:

• 14.2 Management and protection of marine and coastal ecosystems
• 14.4 Implementation of management plans with scientific foundations
• 14.5 Creation of protected marine areas based on the best available scientific information