Ocean Infinity's Armada to aid ambitious seabed mapping project

Texas-based geophysical survey service provider Ocean Infinity has announced the launch of a new marine tech and data company, Armada. The new company will focus on "combining technology and sustainability", and will add fifteen bespoke designed marine robots to Ocean Infinity’s current fleet of autonomous underwater vehicles.

The launch of Armada marks a major technological advance in the industry. Each unmanned surface robot will serve a wide range of industries by being fully equipped to perform a multiplicity of offshore data acquisition and intervention operations down to a depth of 6,000 metres. These robot ships will be capable of remotely deploying a wide range of the latest sensors as well as AUVs and ROVs for visual and acoustic data acquisition.

The announcement from Ocean Infinity ties in with the international GEBCO 2030 project - a collaborative initiative that aims to bring together all the relevant data to produce and make freely available a definitive map of the world's ocean floor by 2030.

The target date is especially ambitious, considering that only around 20% of the ocean floor is currently mapped. In practical terms, it means that much of the world will involve leveraging new technologies or maxing out existing ones.

Despite being a relatively new company, founded in 2016, Ocean Infinity has attracted attention by finding some high-profile shipwrecks such as South Korea's bulk carrier Stellar Daisy, which sank off the coast of Uruguay in March 2017, and San Juan, an Argentinian submarine which went missing during a routine patrol in November 2017.

Ocean Infinity also led an unsuccessful mission to find the missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370, which disappeared in March 2014.

What makes Armada’s fleet of ocean robots especially interesting for the GEBCO project is that it requires neither people on board nor a host vessel nearby.  Instead they will be controlled and operated by experienced mariners via satellite communications from state of the art onshore facilities in both Austin,Texas, and Southampton, UK. 

The fleet will produce up to 90% less CO2 than other conventional survey vessels, also making it the most environmentally sustainable company in the industry.

As well as surveying the ocean floor, Armada's boats will be used to inspect pipelines, assess seabed conditions for telecoms cables and off-shore wind projects, and carry freight.

"The 37 metre boat will actually take about 60 tonnes of deck cargo. We're looking at logistics services in places like the North Sea, running containers out to oil and gas platforms," added Hook.

Armada’s fleet is currently under construction and is expected to be deployable by the end of 2020.

Oliver Plunkett, Ocean Infinity CEO, said: “We’ve been driven to innovate by a desire to further reduce our impact on the environment and the time people spend at sea. We have built an outstanding team who boast world-leading expertise to take this next stage of our business forward for the benefit of our clients and all those who work with us."

Dan Hook, Managing Director at Armada, said: “We are very excited to be launching Armada, which perfectly complements the other service offerings in the Ocean Infinity Group. The pioneering technology makes our operations world-leading in terms of environmental sustainability and safety, whilst still achieving the very highest levels of data quality and value for our clients." 

"With no requirement for a host vessel, we are breaking new ground in the area of sub-sea technology and data.  We look forward to providing our existing and new clients with a best in class solution that will be revolutionary for the industry," he added.

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