ECA ROBOTICS is specialised in robotic offshore inspection systems for shallow / very shallow water to ultra-deep applications. The company designs and manufactures autonomous and remote-controlled surface and underwater vehicles and inspection TV cameras for offshore subsea intervention.
In 1980, the company designed the first unmanned underwater vehicle capable of diving to 6,000m and carrying out photographic and bathymetric survey of the seabed. Main applications today are hydrographical and oceanographic survey, underwater structure inspection, pipe laying survey and deep-sea intervention and manipulation.
Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) for inspection and survey
The ALISTER range of autonomous underwater vehicles consists of AUVs of different diameters (9in, 18in and 27in), form man-portable to multi-purpose and long endurance AUVs. They are equipped with different sensors, adapted to the missions to be carried out, such as confined area inspection, seafloor and hydrographic survey, high resolution and high coverage image acquisition, high resolution seismic survey and sediment analysis, among others.
The ALISTAR 3000 AUV, part of the range, is depth-rated to 3,000m and specifically designed for carrying out a variety of inspection tasks on ultra-deep offshore oilfields. Examples include inspection of pipelines, risers or mooring lines, touch-down monitoring and post-lay surveys. It offers operators greater flexibility and overall faster operation, ensured by unique hovering capacities, small spread and lack of winch. The ALISTAR 3000 is also capable of performing survey missions.
All AUVs in the range are tuned with data-acquisition and post-processing software from the group’s US-based affiliate Triton Imaging Inc., and as such provide additional enhanced capacities.
Unmanned surface vehicles for survey and bathymetry (USV)
INSPECTOR MK2 features a very shallow draught and one patented rotary bow arm for shallow and very shallow water survey, detection and object classification. Remotely operated or autonomous, this unmanned surface vehicle carries out missions such as littoral and inshore hydrographic operations, and harbour and offshore asset survey and protection, and features an easy configurable sensor carrier, high-navigation accuracy for repetitive survey, high-endurance at sea, etc. It is used for the acquisition of subsea images and bathymetric survey.
Subsea inspection and observation ROVs
Today the ROV product range features remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) with different depth rating, from 300m to 2,000m, from 65kg to 900kg, and configured with different equipment (cameras, sonar, video, manipulators, spotlights, etc.). Missions include inspection, diver-support tasks, subsea search and object identification, subsea intervention and manipulation and salvage operations.
The product line includes: H300, H800, H1000 and H2000.
Hull inspection and hull cleaning ROV
ROVING BAT is a unique multi-purpose hybrid ROV and crawler for close inspection and cleaning operations. It carries out inspection of hulls and FPSOs, sea chest, immersed structures, hydraulic dams, undertakes hull thickness measurements, cleans ship hulls or immersed structures and can be used for detecting suspicious devices.
High-resolution image acquisition ROV
SEA SCAN is designed for special applications such as rapid and high-resolution image acquisition in the context of accurate pipe and dam survey, leak and crack investigation, and hull and pier inspection.