Sonardyne’s Technology to Navigate New Thai AUV

Sonardyne Asia’s marine robotics technology has been selected to help navigate a new autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) being jointly developed by PTT Exploration and Production Public Company (PTTEP) and Kasetsart University (KU), Bangkok, Thailand.

The order for a Sprint inertial navigation system (INS) and Syrinx Doppler Velocity Log (DVL) was placed by the PTTEP-KU and will be integrated on a 4,000 meter rated, long endurance AUV, being built for applications including pipeline maintenance and oil spill detection.

KU, as part of this research program, will be the first academic institution in the region to own Sonardyne’s Sprint which supports dual gyrocompass and INS operating modes, allowing AUV pilots and survey teams to utilize its navigation output simultaneously.

Daniel Tan, regional sales manager for Sonardyne in Singapore said, “The marine robotics team at Kasetsart are designing a vehicle that will be capable of conducting pipeline inspections over distances of 100 kilometers without any external position aiding. Reliable, survey-grade navigation data will be essential to the success of its missions and this is where our all-in-one acoustically-aided INS solution comes in.”

Yodyium Tipsuwan, assistant professor at Kasetsart University, said, “We chose a Sonardyne solution because a tight integration between INS and DVL results in highly reliable navigation data. This is very crucial for a very long range autonomous mission. Also, this comes with smaller cost comparing to other solutions.”