Houston Mechatronics taps OPENSEA for its transforming AUV/ROV

Ocean robotics firm Houston Mechatronics Inc. (HMI) has selected Greensea’s OPENSEA software architecture as the development platform for its subsea transforming AUV/ROV Aquanaut.

Houston Mechatronics was able to leverage Greensea’s experience in subsea navigation and vehicle control while focusing its development efforts on robotics, manipulation, and autonomy.

Jide Akinyode, Aquanaut program manager, said:

“OPENSEA enabled us to quickly integrate an executive control and mission planning solution onto Aquanaut, our transforming AUV/ROV.

“The open and modular architecture of Greensea’s software allowed us to pick and choose tools within the SDK that covered our own software gaps. This, in turn, allowed us to bring our testing forward and achieve both our customer’s and company’s milestones during early Aquanaut development and testing.”

Ben Kinnaman, CEO of Greensea.

“HMI is the perfect example of how OPENSEA as a Platform can be used to expand a company’s technology footprint without adding the overhead of having foundation-level technologies such as navigation and vehicle control.”

“Greensea has spent more than a decade developing and testing systems needed for highly accurate subsea navigation and control in all kinds of hostile, demanding environments. Using the OPENSEA SDK, HMI is able to develop a revolutionary idea on a robust platform.”

HMI’s Aquanaut is a multipurpose subsea robot which employs a shape-shifting transformation from an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) to a tetherless remotely operated vehicle (ROV), removing the need for large vessels as well as umbilicals.

HMI claims that the vehicle’s two distinct operating modes enable both the collection of data as well as the remote operation of maintenance and repair tasks at a significantly lower cost than today’s technology.