Nauticus to support Petrobras’ offshore activities with autonomous subsea robot

(WO) – Nauticus Robotics, Inc. has been awarded a contract with Petrobras to deploy Aquanaut, the company’s autonomous subsea robot, to support Petrobras’ offshore activities.

Petrobras has ramped up efforts recently in robotics and artificial intelligence and is pioneering their application to the offshore sectors. Toward that end, this relevant contract was competitively awarded to Nauticus and will utilize Aquanaut in Petrobras’ Deepwater Production Field using supervised autonomy for infield inspection services.

The contract consists of approximately two months of subsea inspection time and is one of the largest awarded contracts of its kind to date worldwide. Nauticus' success in winning this initial award places it as a relevant player for potential subsequent contracts that Petrobras estimates to be carried out and expands Nauticus’ growing international presence to South America with a leading operator.

Over the past several years, Nauticus has been developing a library of autonomous behaviors based on the latest techniques in machine learning and artificial intelligence, which enable its subsea robots to learn and adapt to the dynamic conditions of working underwater. The fully electric Aquanaut carries an array of multi-spectral perception sensors that allow the robot to detect, classify, inspect, and act upon subsea infrastructure using its pair of manipulators without direct operator control. This method provides significant cost and greenhouse gas emissions reductions over conventional methods.

Petrobras is one of the world's largest and most active offshore operators, managing 57 platforms, ten thousand miles of oil and gas pipelines, and producing 2.6 million barrels of oil equivalent per day.