Mega AUV HUGIN Endurance Passes Sea Trials

Oct 26, 2023

The first HUGIN Endurance being prepared for sea trials (Photo: Kongsberg Discovery)

“With HUGIN Endurance we are pushing the boundaries for autonomous over-the-horizon AUV operations. There are countless possible underwater applications, including geophysical, environmental, hydrographic, naval, security, critical asset inspection and search-and-rescue operations. Although we only launched the development project in 2021, thanks to our more than 30 years of experience in AUV technology we’ve been able to develop a transformative product within a very short time. To see it in th

Kongsberg Discovery started sea trials with its new long-range Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV), HUGIN Endurance.

Launched in 2021, HUGIN Endurance measures nearly 11m long with a 1.2m diameter, weighing around 8,000 kg. This mega AUV is rated to a depth of 6,000m and designed to facilitate independent multi-role operations spanning approximately 2,200km or 1,200 nautical miles.

Powered by pressure-tolerant lithium batteries, the unit can be deployed directly from shore and spend up to 15 days at sea

“The name Endurance says it all," said Martin Wien Fjell, President Kongsberg Discovery. "Its long-range capability represents a huge cost benefit, with no mother ship required for launching, monitoring and recharging. For customers, being able to carry out unsupervised operations far from any support infrastructure, both reduces project costs and carbon footprint while significantly increasing the weather window. And even if a support ship is available or required, it can be assigned to other productive tasks while the HUGIN Endurance is on mission.”

As standard, HUGIN Endurance comes equipped with a wide array of sensors for survey campaigns. This includes a wide-swath high-resolution synthetic aperture sonar (HISAS 1032 Dual RX), multibeam echo sounder (EM 2040 MkII), sub-bottom profiling system, colour camera, laser profiler, magnetometer and environmental sensors collecting data such as conductivity, temperature, sound and speed, and environmental sensors for methane, CO2 and O2 concentration.

The unit retains many capabilities found across Kongsberg Discovery’s entire HUGIN range. It also looks similar to previous HUGIN models but boasts new features including fins that allow stable and horizontal flight in waters of varying density and more agile bottom avoidance, as well as a unique tail design accommodating contra-rotating dual propellers.

Using KONGSBERG’s Sunstone inertial navigation system (INS) for highly accurate underwater positioning, HUGIN Endurance is designed for days to weeks of submerged autonomous operation without position update from external sources. A new autonomous mission management system allows new levels of situational awareness and decision making compared to previous designs. HUGIN Endurance can communicate acoustically with pre-deployed transponders and surface vessels when submerged and has RF and satellite connectivity when at the surface.

Sea trials of the first HUGIN Endurance in progress (Photo: Kongsberg Discovery)