Norwegian company Kongsberg Maritime has announced that Lighthouse will take delivery of a HUGIN Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) system in March 2021, allowing our company to add another cutting-edge technology system to our surveying capabilities.

The HUGIN to be delivered is rated to 4,500 meters and equipped with a full geophysical survey payload, including KONGSBERG HISAS 1032 synthetic aperture sonar, EM2040 multibeam echosounder, sub-bottom profiler, camera and laser, together with a range of environmental sensors.

25 March 2021

The scope of supply extends to all equipment required for day-to-day operations, including a 30 ft AUV container housing the Stinger launch and recovery system, battery chargers and maintenance equipment. A 10 ft operations room container is configured for mission planning and dive management as well as data download and review.

The HUGIN AUV system is the most successful commercial AUV in the world. More survey kilometers have been completed by HUGINs than any other AUV. Lighthouse’s HUGIN benefits from some proven enabling technologies that further enhance its capabilities, including automatic pipeline following. This uses real-time data from the HISAS and EM2040 systems to detect pipelines, tracking either alongside or over the top of them to collect sonar, camera and laser data.

“We at Lighthouse have chosen to invest in a HUGIN AUV System, confident that it will provide state-of-the-art AUV technology with unique quality and reliability,” said Mr Pietro Basciano, Lighthouse SpA CEO. “We believe this will open commercial opportunities for us. From our first contact with KONGSBERG we immediately realised that we had made the right choice; their competence and professionalism combined with an ability to understand our needs made everything easy. We look forward to operating the HUGIN for many years to come.”

Richard Mills, Vice President of Marine Robotics Sales at Kongsberg Maritime is keen to welcome Lighthouse to their growing family of HUGIN AUV operators: “We are honored that Lighthouse chose the KONGSBERG HUGIN AUV System for their survey operations. We look forward to working with their team to ensure the AUV exceeds their expectations.”

The system is designed for a variety of survey missions including:
• High-resolution high-speed seabed mapping and imaging
• Oceanographic surveys
• Environmental monitoring
• Search operations