Eelumes are Swimming Robots for Subsea Maintenance

By: | May 7th, 2016

Image courtesy Kongsberg Maritime

Humans are not water animals; the human body can’t function normally beyond a certain range. Underwater pressure can turn lethal for an unprotected human body.

In a big breakthrough, Eelume, a spin-off company of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), in collaboration with Kongsberg Maritime and Statoil, has developed a swimming robot called Eelume.

TheĀ Eelume robot is a self-propelled aquatic mechanical snake that is designed to reduce the costs of maintaining underwater equipment and perform complex repair jobs beneath the waves.

Here are some of the features of this serpent-like robot:

  • It can be permanently installed on the seafloor and is designed to perform planned and on-demand inspection work and basic repair jobs.
  • These swimming robots will help in reducing operational costs and increase productivity, as these robots will replace expensive autonomous underwater vehicles.
  • The flexible and versatile body of these robots will help them swim around undersea equipment. This way they will be able to reach tight and restricted undersea spaces and perform their jobs like cleaning, adjusting valves, and other chores in an easier and better way.
  • These robots will work 24 hours a day, attending to issues whenever they arise.

Nidhi Goyal

Nidhi is a gold medalist Post Graduate in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences.

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