Hydromea gets Subsea Offshore Industry backing

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16.10.2020
Hydromea team

Lausanne-based EPFL start-up Hydromea is awarded undisclosed grant funding from Scotland-based Oil & Gas Technology Centre (OGTC) in a co-development multi-year project with petrol and gas producer Total E&P UK. The funding will accelerate the development of Hydromea underwater autonomous inspection robots, enabling onsite asset integrity inspections of submerged infrastructure.

Founded in 2014 as an EPFL spin-off, Hydromea has developed unique expertise and IP in the complex area of underwater navigation and communication next to or within complex submerged infrastructure. This enables the small team to be the first in the market of placing underwater autonomous robots into confined flooded space for inspection and monitoring. The company has succeeded in securing first-phase funding in a multi-million project to reduce CO2 emissions and inspection costs in harsh offshore environments.

In the first phase of the project, the company’s wireless underwater inspection drone, world’s first of its kind, will replace a multi-person manned entry into dangerous, confined space filled with water, such as ballast water tanks on vessels, in the oil, gas and shipping industries. Removing a tether allows the drone to dive through intricate labyrinths without getting tangled.  This technology will eliminate the need to enter these spaces by humans, thereby increasing the safety of the operations, while reducing cost and enabling remote inspection capability. In the follow-up phases and relying on the company’s prior experience in the multi-robot systems, the technology will enable open-sea inspection missions either from unmanned surface vehicles or from resident platforms. The market for underwater asset integrity inspections globally is estimated to grow to CHF 14 billion over the next 5 years fueled by increasing renewable energy development offshore.

Igor Martin, CEO of Hydromea, said: “We are thrilled to get an approval of funding and look forward to an exciting collaboration with Total E&P UK and the OGTC. We’ve been building a portable drone platform by developing key enabling technologies that address excruciating complexity inherently associated with the underwater environment. The subsea offshore industry knows all about it and this vote of confidence confirms our unique capabilities in this domain.”

Rebecca Allison, Asset Integrity Solution Center Manager at the OGTC, said: “Our member companies have set us a strategic objective to mitigate risks to personnel by developing and implementing innovative robotic solutions for dull, dirty and dangerous tasks. A remote inspection capability which can reduce emissions and increase safety is as relevant as ever in today’s environment. Hydromea has demonstrated that they have technology capable of delivering this vision and we are delighted to support them with the acceleration of their technology development into the oil & gas and other energy sectors.” Established since 2016, Scotland based OGTC’s mission is to be the go-to technology centre for the oil and gas industry - both in the UK and internationally.

While Hydromea has shown its know-how in building portable autonomous robots for 3D environmental mapping of underwater parameters, the startup is also rapidly becoming an emerging leader in underwater high-bandwidth wireless communication – one of the key building blocks of the drone platform - and leads optical communication standard setting of SWiG, a subsea wireless industry group network.

(ES)

 

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