Hydroid’s New President Satisfied with Company’s Growth

Hydroid, a leading provider of autonomous underwater vehicles, recently announced that Mr. Duane Fotheringham took the role of the President of the Company.

During a phone interview Mr. Fotheringham expressed his satisfaction with the Company’s growth, and its recent participation at the Oceanology International exhibition and conference.

When asked about Hydroid’s future goals, Fotheringham said: “The short term goal is to continue the success that Hydroid has had and to maintain the passion and the innovation that made the company great while continuing to grow the company.”

“Over the last three years we have been very fortunate to have significant growth. We’ve grown over 30 percent per year for the last three years and we want to do everything necessary to maintain that growth.”

As seen by Hydroid through its military work programmes, the AUV market continues to mature and Hydroid’s development moves along with it.

A subsidiary of Kongsberg Maritime, Hydroid strives to become an even better and larger company while working to constantly improve its technology.

As Fotheringham said, one of the Company’s goals is to enhance the autonomy of its systems, making them smarter and more efficient. This effort was recently exemplified with Hydroid’s contribution to Kongsberg’s release of the new MUNIN AUV.

The new, low logistics, highly capable MUNIN AUV is the result of taking the best parts of the successful REMUS 600 and state-of-the-art sensors and navigation from Kongsberg. It is designed to collect high resolution sonar data geo-referenced by a survey grade positioning system. Capable of providing the same high-level performance and survey accuracy of other established KONGSBERG AUV lines, MUNIN is an efficient compact vehicle design, providing for easier launch and recovery and the possibility of using smaller launch vessels.

As Fotheringham said, most of the development in this project is applicable in the MUNIN and REMUS vehicle lines.

During this year’s Oceanology International, Hydroid showcased its AUV technology along with MUNIN.

About his impression of Oceanology International Fotheringham stated: “Oceanology is a terrific conference with the tremendous opportunity to see new technology and to see what other people in the industry are doing. It is a good chance to meet existing and potential customers and it is a great venue for networking and gaining contacts. For us it was a very successful conference.”

As the leading AUV provider, Hydroid also organizes REMUS 100 training courses which showed as very successful and well received in the industry.

A few years ago Hydroid revamped its training and introduced the so-called virtual fleet simulators which simulate the interaction with the vehicle and allow a larger number of people to get their hands on the vehicle and learn more about it.

Hydroid is currently offering its courses and open enrollment trainings in the US and Europe, but if the need arises it will expand the offer to other countries. In the near future it plans to conduct courses in Norway.

At the end Fotheringham added: “Hydroid takes great pride in delivering great products to our customers and we really appreciate the support we gain from them.”

Subsea World News Staff, March 25, 2014