UK firm plans autonomous submarine fleet, 50 units in the long term

UK’s remote robotics company HonuWorx is planning to develop a fleet of autonomous submarines that will perform services across the oil & gas, offshore wind, and defense sectors, targeting 50 units in the long term.

In what the company describes as an industry-first, HonuWorx deployed a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) from a fully autonomous and uncrewed mothership submarine, controlled from shore via the cloud, proving the viability of its Loggerhead submersible system.

According to the Aberdeen-based company, Loggerhead removes the need for large fossil-fuelled surface ships to transport and deploy subsea robots, creating a cleaner, more cost-effective and safer deployment method than the one typically used in the industry for over 40 years.

HonuWorx revealed it now plans to develop a fleet of Loggerhead submarines to capture a 20% share of the $3.2 billion global market for subsea inspection, repair and maintenance (IRM) across oil & gas, offshore wind, and defense within the next decade, kicking off the first phase of a £30 million (nearly $39 million) investment raise in the coming months and construction of the first Loggerhead commercial pilot system in 2025.

Through wider expansion, the firm plans to develop a fleet of at least 10 Loggerhead units by 2030, with a longer-term goal of having 50 submersibles.

HonuWorx described the submersibles as being all-electric and having ultra-long endurance for traveling directly from port to a worksite, such as an oilfield or wind farm, harnessing satellite communications systems to save the annual emissions equivalent of 4,000 petrol or diesel cars per vessel it displaces.

“HonuWorx was created because the economics, safety and carbon emissions of subsea work could only be meaningfully improved by removing the large ships needed to deploy divers or subsea remotely operated vehicles,” said HonuWorx Chief Executive Lee Wilson.

“We are going to change the way the world works underwater, accelerating the energy transition, and enabling the safe and sustainable scaling of subsea robotics for a growing blue economy.” 

Proof of concept demonstration of Loggerhead was carried out off the coast of Vancouver, Canada, in December 2023, where a Seatronics VALOR ROV was deployed from a large autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) provided by Cellula Robotics.

The project was supported by TotalEnergies and Shell alongside the Net Zero Technology Centre (NZTC). Additional technology field testing has been delivered over the last 10 months including the system’s communications buoy and variable autonomy architecture. Further tests of communications elements took place at Fort William this July. 

“TotalEnergies has a long-established interest in robotics and autonomous systems for safe operations,” said Greg Jones, Subsea Lead for TotalEnergies E&P UK. “Loggerhead is an example of the next stage of subsea autonomous systems, which via our participation in NZTC, we have been keen to support. This system has the potential to support decarbonisation, improve safety and lower costs for subsea inspection and maintenance and we look forward to seeing how it develops further.”