INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGIES FOR OFFSHORE INSTALLATION, MAINTENANCE AND INTERVENTION

Underwater structures and offshore platforms require efficient installation methodologies, as well as regular monitoring and maintenance actions; their presence in harsh environments and hardly reachable locations makes such operations quite complex to be carried out, requiring support vessels, professional divers and so forth. These technical and logistic obstacles can be overcome by the employment of cutting-edge technologies for structure transportation and installation, as well as robotic tools for remote operations; such innovative tools have become commercially available and reliable in recent years. Autonomous underwater robots can be exploited for remote monitoring operations, allowing long-endurance observation and assessment actions, as well as advanced intervention capabilities allowing movement, mounting and manipulation of objects and artifacts. As a side effect, the fast-growing presence of Oil & Gas and deep mining infrastructures and plants involves an increasing attention towards the environmental healthiness. For this reason, persistent monitoring and assessment actions have to be carried out in order to measure the anthropic impact on the surrounding environment. In this context, the MATRAC-ACP project aims at enhancing the protection of harbor waters, improving monitoring procedures by means of highly automated robotic technologies and novel adaptive sampling methodologies, in this way providing an accurate and repeatable spatial-temporal measuring action. The concept of the MATRAC-ACP project can be the basis for future extended autonomous monitoring frameworks for remote Oil & Gas and deep mining operational sites. The proposed contribution aims at presenting the current state of the art and research directions for offshore installation, focusing on the development of the float-over technology using tandem barges for efficient transportation, and the massive employment of robotic technologies for offshore and deep-sea related activities, combined with autonomous monitoring frameworks for environmental assessment and protection.