Forssea Robotics contracted by Centrale Nantes for an underwater survey of Floatgen on the SEM-REV offshore test site

Searov Offshore, in partnership with Forssea Robotics, was selected to complete the annual underwater survey of FLOATGEN. FLOATGEN, developed by BW Ideol and installed on the Centrale Nantes Offshore test site since 2018, is the only offshore wind turbine - whether fixed or floating - installed in France. For this operation, Forssea Robotics developed a dedicated survey skid for its ARGOS ROV and established a partnership with Sulmara Subsea, an international survey services contractor who was responsible for supplying the survey and positioning services during the subsea operations. The main goal of this underwater survey was to visually confirm the integrity of the mooring lines and dynamic umbilical system, besides characterizing marine growth on the various components. The survey was successfully completed in June 2021.

 

The Interreg Ocean DEMO project has also allowed École Centrale de Nantes to partner with Forssea Robotics to deploy other smart technologies offering for offshore wind farms in the coming months, such as the “Visual DP” system, which uses Forssea’s Smart Navigation Camera (NavCam) for precise real-time visual positioning. This system can be easily integrated to any IMR vessel’s DP system, with Forssea’s NavCam pointing towards an Aruco tag visual marker (“QR-code”) installed in the floating wind turbine. This technology is currently under qualification with ECN and the results are very promising!

In the coming months, Forssea Robotics will keep developing the ARGOS ROV autonomous survey capabilities, which were already validated last year, and additional qualifications are expected this year on various offshore sites, including ECN’s SEM-REV site! New announcements will be made soon!