Massive Autonomous Underwater Drone Completes 1,200-Nautical Mile Mission

A Norwegian ocean exploration firm’s massive underwater drone recently completed a multi-week, fully autonomous voyage, traveling 1,200 nautical miles and ending the mission with a position error of just 0.02% from target.

The 8-ton, 40-foot-long HUGIN Endurance autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) was developed by Kongsberg Discovery, a unit of the Norwegian multinational Kongsberg Gruppen, which supplies high-tech systems to customers in marine, defense, offshore drilling and aerospace industries.  

The mission saw the submarine dive to depths of 11,100 feet with no human interaction and no external navigational aids. The trip, which was designed to validate the product design and put it through its paces in a real-world environment, comprised straight-line transits of 60 to 300 nautical-mile legs and survey areas of 36 square nautical miles. 

The AUV carried a variety of sensors, which collected very high-resolution synthetic aperture sonar imagery and bathymetry, photo imagery and laser-profiling data at altitudes as low as 29 feet from the ocean floor. 

“All credit goes to our phenomenal team of engineers and operators that have made HUGIN Endurance the most capable AUV on the market,” said Rich Patterson, vice president of sales, uncrewed platforms division. “The mission we’ve just completed validates the design specifications of the system and provides proof that our HUGIN autonomy framework is fully capable of performing complex multi-day missions with no human interaction.”

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The Endurance was launched in 2021. The first production unit began sea trials in September 2023 and was delivered to the customer after a successful demonstration in March. With a full complement of advanced lithium-ion batteries, it can operate autonomously for 15 days and travel up to 1,300 miles, equivalent to sailing from New York to Cuba. The vessel can be outfitted with a multitude of sensors to collect a host of undersea data and has a large, configurable payload area to meet a range of customer needs.

Military Interest

The Endurance is the fourth and largest iteration of Kongsberg Discovery’s HUGIN line of AUVs. In January, the company was awarded a contract by the U.S. Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) to deliver HUGIN capabilities to the U.S. military as part of its Large Diameter Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (LDUUV) systems effort. A delegation from the DIU and U.S. Navy traveled to Norway in April for a week-long demonstration of the vessels.

Initially employed in commercial capacities, the subs have seen increased interest from defense organizations. There are currently 12 navies using HUGIN vessels in a variety of military capacities, including intelligence preparation of the operational environment (IPoE), mine counter measure (MCM), subsea and seabed warfare (SSW) and seafloor mapping.

“Our HUGIN AUVs were always designed for dual-use purposes,” Patterson said after the April demonstration with the U.S. “In the early years of the program, our user base tended to be primarily in the commercial market. In the last few years, we have seen a shift in the marketplace, with increasing demand from the defense space as our AUV technology became more mature and were demonstrated to have extremely high reliability.”