Factory acceptance testing wraps up for Norwegian long-range AUV

Norway’s Kongsberg Discovery has completed factory acceptance testing for the first production system of its long-range autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) HUGIN Endurance.

Sea trials for the first production unit began in September 2023, and over the last months, the Kongsberg Discovery Uncrewed Platforms team has put HUGIN Endurance through its paces, verifying and refining all system capabilities.

Sea trials were finalized this March with a demonstration of the AUV capabilities to the customer.

“I am very proud of the team’s hard work, and we are achieving yet another significant milestone in the history of our company. The project has been delivered in record time, and a huge thank you to everybody who has contributed to this success,” said Kongsberg Discovery President Martin Wien Fjell.

Launched in 2021, HUGIN Endurance is the largest member of Kongsberg Discovery’s HUGIN family of AUVs. According to the company, the system can come equipped with a wide array of standard sensors, including a wide-swath high-resolution synthetic aperture sonar (HISAS 1032 Dual RX), multibeam echo sounder (EM 2040 MkII), sub-bottom profiling system, color camera, laser profiler, magnetometer and environmental sensors collecting data such as conductivity, temperature, sound speed, methane, and CO2 and O2 concentration.

In addition, the vehicle includes a large configurable volume that can be used to carry a mixture of batteries and custom payloads as needed. The system is designed to allow autonomous operations directly from shore, and with a full complement of batteries, it can spend up to 15 days at sea, traveling up to 2,200 kilometers.

While the new AUV incorporates many capabilities found in previous HUGIN vehicles, to enable long-term unsupported missions, new advancements had to be made, including greater redundancy, a new autonomous mission management system, greater situational awareness, and the ability to deal with a wide range of varying water density, Kongsberg Discovery said.

Fjell said that the HUGIN Endurance program has attracted significant interest both from the defense sector and commercial operators: “Endurance can accommodate whatever kind of payload a customer wants, whether for seabed mapping or inspection, oceanography, continuous surveys of offshore wind parks, or as a surveillance tool for critical subsea infrastructure or changes in ecosystems. To achieve the first system delivery is a significant milestone, and we will continue to develop additional capabilities.”