USE Network launch I UAV Works VALAQ l Cable harnesses l USVs insight l Xponential 2020 update l MARIN AUV l Suter Industries TOA 288 l Vitirover l AI systems l Vtrus ABI

22 In conversation | Bjorn Gjelstad the basis of all the subsequent generations of Kongsberg DP systems.” He would also help to develop the ADP503, a dual redundancy processing system for ships. This consisted of two computers carrying out the same series of tasks, alongside a third computer that would passively monitor them and assess their accuracy and integrity – and, in the event of a discrepancy between the two, determine which could be trusted to provide accurate calculations. It was another approach to fault monitoring and redundancy that would later be popularised in unmanned vehicle navigation. The Hugin By 2007, at the age of 48, Gjelstad had worked as either manager or product manager for DP, first with Kongsberg Albatross, then Kongsberg Simrad and then Kongsberg Maritime – and felt the time had come to seek new challenges. “The Hugin was already well-known within the company at that time, and it caught my interest because of the relative immaturity of the technology and processes involved,” he says. “That meant there was a lot of progress to be made; working within a small, enthusiastic, tightly- knit team again also gave me motivation.” He started in the Hugin team as a software development engineer, initially writing and testing new control algorithms for the AUV’s propeller, and later optimising the satellite data links to ensure accurate GPS localisation and emergency comms through Iridium while the Hugin is at the surface. After the summer of 2008, he took on the position of r&d manager, finding that the experience and knowledge he had gained leading the development of the safety-critical DP systems for ships helped greatly in managing the progress of the Hugin project. “DP and autonomous navigation both require a huge focus on reliability and progressing in technology readiness ratings,” he says. “While ROVs were already being used pretty widely, an AUV is a complete vessel that needs to incorporate a control system, energy source, navigation, comms, obstacle avoidance and more. “The Hugin therefore had to incorporate far more electronics than most other UUVs out there, which brought additional challenges in managing temperature, EMI, pressure and corrosion. All of that added up to the most complex project I’d ever taken on.” As r&d manager, Gjelstad oversaw the work of the three groups – software, mechanical and the hardware & electronics – involved in the Hugin’s development. That included not just the UUV itself but the operator control systems, post-processing systems for gathered survey data, and the techniques for launching and recovering the vehicle. This also culminated in the Hugin Superior AUV, which Gjelstad’s team designed for a depth of 6000 m (compared with the base Hugin’s maximum depth rating of 4500 m), and integrated a HISAS 1032 dual receiver synthetic aperture sonar. The Hugin Superior has since completed development, and will soon be delivered to its (unnamed) launch customer. “There was much more going into the Superior too. That UUV came about as an aggregation of different ideas for improving the Hugin that the r&d team had come up with and filed away over the years,” he notes. June/July 2020 | Unmanned Systems Technology The Hugin Superior was developed using ideas from Gjelstad and his team as to how the performance and capabilities of the base Hugin vehicle could be taken to their optimal limit I was interested in the Hugin because of the relative immaturity of the technology, so a lot of progress could be made