The subsea industry cannot seem to resist the temptation to use references from nature — swimmers, fish, flying eyeballs — to describe remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) and their free-floating cousins, autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs).
But scientists in Norway are taking this biomorphic tendency to a new level with Eelume, a seafloor-dwelling inspection and light maintenance AUV concept that uses snake robotics technology to swim into confined spaces and difficult-to-access areas of subsea infrastructure.
