ABBA USV

Challenge
Offshore infrastructure is becoming increasingly critical and is expected to deliver nearly all communications and 44.8% of all energy by 2050.
The growing offshore infrastructure leads to a corresponding increase in the need for inspection, maintenance, repair, and monitoring operations. This is reflected in an addressable market of USD 37.5 billion in 2024, with expected growth to USD 71 billion by 2034.

Solution
The partners in the ABBA USV project are developing a new collaboration between unmanned aerial, surface, and underwater vehicles (UxVs). The outcome of the innovation project will be a unified communication platform, and the partners will test the system with end users to demonstrate its potential.

UxV collaboration enables offshore tasks and monitoring operations to be carried out remotely and autonomously, reducing response time, costs, and environmental impact. At the same time, it improves resilience and enables near-continuous operation.

Unmanned operation means that a fleet of UxVs can cover large areas and collect vast amounts of data, providing a more accurate and reliable status of offshore infrastructure. These data can also be used for digital twins.
The concept behind ABBA USV is based on existing technologies combined into a collaborative unit. Interaction between UxVs makes it possible to compensate for individual platform weaknesses through cooperation and sensor fusion across the different domains.

Several end users support the ABBA USV project and see the potential of UxV collaboration to deliver fast and cost-effective maintenance and monitoring in the event of anomalies. End users in the project include Energinet and GlobalConnect, enabling testing of the platform on subsea cables, pipelines, and platforms.