Beam, a leading provider of high-technology offshore wind services, has achieved a groundbreaking milestone by deploying the world’s first autonomous underwater vehicle driven by artificial intelligence (AI). The technology has already been successfully used to inspect jacket structures on Seagreen wind farm, a JV partnership between SSE Renewables, TotalEnergies and PTTEP, in a commercial environment. Seagreen is Scotland’s largest offshore site.
This cutting-edge technology promises to revolutionise the field of marine technology and underwater robotics. By leveraging advanced AI, this technology can perform complex underwater tasks with no human intervention, significantly boosting the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of underwater inspections and surveys.
Beam’s world first AI-driven technology is set to change the ways of working underwater forever. Inspections of offshore wind sites are typically manual and time intensive. Moving away from remote operation, coupled with the streaming of data directly back to shore, will allow offshore workers to concentrate on the more complex elements of their roles. This AI driven way of working also reduces inspection timelines by up to 50%, which in turn cuts operational costs. The use of this technology provides other benefits in drastically improving inspection data quality and enabling 3D reconstruction of assets alongside visual data.
This is an important step in Beam’s roadmap for autonomy development, demonstrating Beam’s capabilities with a fully self-piloted underwater vehicle. Beam will be rolling out this new technology across its fleet of DP2 vessels, ROVs and AUVs throughout 2025 and 2026.
Beam’s CEO, Brian Allen stated: “We are very proud to have succeeded in deploying the world’s first autonomous underwater vehicle driven by AI. Automation can revolutionise how we carry out inspection and maintenance of offshore wind farms, helping to reduce both costs and timelines. Looking ahead to the future, the potential of this technology is huge for the industry, and success in these initial projects is vital for us to progress and realise this vision. This wouldn’t be possible without forward-thinking customers like SSE Renewables who are willing to go on the journey with us.”
Seagreen has been operational since October 2023 and is the world’s deepest fixed bottom offshore wind farm. The success of Beam’s project therefore provides important learnings for the use of autonomous tech on offshore wind superstructures. The data collected by Beam will be used to maintain operational reliability at the wind farm, providing insight into areas such as marine growth and any potential erosion at the foundations.
Matthew Henderson, Technical Asset Manager – Substructure and Asset Lifecycle at SSE Renewables, said, “”At SSE, we have a mantra that “if it’s not safe, we don’t do it”. Beam’s technology demonstrates that autonomous inspections can reduce the personnel we need to send offshore for planned inspections, while speeding up planned works and collecting rich data-sets to inform asset integrity planning. As we move further offshore, and into deeper waters – the ability to collect high quality inspection data in a low-risk manner is imperative to us delivering our Net Zero Acceleration Programme.”