Innovative Technologies Developed for Autonomous Marine Vehicles by ENDURUNS Project

In the last years, the interest for offshore areas exploitation has been increased and the marine industry has been experiencing a great growth. These facts motivate the employment of autonomous marine vehicles for monitorization, survey or maintenance works. In this paper, the ENDURUNS project has been proposed. This European initiative develops a sustainable offshore exploration system-based innovation in two coordinated autonomous marine vehicles (surface and underwater vessels), both powered by renewable energies. This project involves great technical challenges due to the goal of zero emission performance. The communications' infrastructures are an important milestone to achieve a real time monitoring of the system by the user from the remote-control centre. The energy systems employed (solar photovoltaic and hydrogen fuel cell technologies) bring a distinguishing point with regards to the current marine vehicles market. Finally, the sensors and instrumentation implemented in these vehicles allow a high inspection capacity, where all of these are supported by a complex software customization.