Kongsberg Discovery is reporting a major achievement in the field of autonomous underwater technology with its latest milestone for the HUGIN Endurance. The company has successfully completed a multi-week autonomous mission, setting new records and showcasing the advanced capabilities of their 8-ton, 40-foot autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV).
During the mission, HUGIN Endurance operated without human intervention or external navigation aids for the entire duration. After receiving a final navigation update from a pre-deployed transponder 10 hours into the dive, the AUV maintained its autonomy while navigating depths ranging from 50 meters to 3,400 meters. The vehicle met its advertised range of 1,200 nautical miles and returned with an impressive position error of just 0.02% of the total distance traveled.
The mission was designed to test the AUV’s performance in real-world conditions and validate its design specifications. The mission plan included straight-line transits covering distances between 60 and 300 nautical miles, as well as extensive survey areas. The AUV successfully surveyed 36 square nautical miles using Kongsberg’s HISAS 1032 Dual Rx synthetic aperture sonar (SAS) system, capturing high-resolution imagery and bathymetric data within 48 hours. Additionally, camera imagery and laser profiling data were collected at depths as shallow as 9 meters.
Espen Henriksen, Executive Vice President Uncrewed Platforms Division, said, “The success of this mission proves HUGIN Endurance’s shore-to-shore operational capability. Removing the need for a surface ship provides a huge savings to our customers, in both time and resources. We are proud of our exceptional team has been working very hard to add this capability to our AUV portfolio.”
Rich Patterson, Vice President of Sales, Uncrewed Platforms Division, said, “All credit goes to our phenomenal team of engineers and operators that have made HUGIN Endurance the most capable AUV on the market. The mission we’ve just completed validates the design specifications of the system and provides proof that our HUGIN autonomy framework is fully capable of performing complex multi-day missions with no human interaction. We are extremely excited about the vast operational capabilities we can bring to our customers with HUGIN Endurance.”