AQUA EXPLORER 2000

The next generation underwater vehicle, AQUAEXPLORER 2000(AE2000) is an autonomous underwater vehicle(AUV) which have no control cables with the mother vessel.

AE2000 was developed based on the last generation AE-2(*). Although it's external form is the same as AE-2, it has double navigation duration of AE-2, and can submerge up to a depth of maximum 2,000 meters. By the free mobility, AE2000, comparing with any conventional survey equipment or robots, realizes high cost-benefit performance in optical submarine cable installation and maintenance.
     * AUV with the performance of a diving depth of 500 meters , developed by KDDI

Main use of AE2000 is for surveys on the seabed in advance of submarine cable laying, and on burial and non-burial cables. AE2000 is very effective for finding out failures which have occurred, or failures which have possibilities to occur in near future, and is contributing to enhance the reliability of the world's information network further.

Since its operational procedure is programmed in the computer of the vehicle prior to a launch, AE2000 can operate without instructions from the mother vessel.
AE2000 tracks submarine cables by the data from the magnetic sensor on AE2000, records cable burial status or seabed status where cables are buried by using the still camera or TV camera, and at the same time, measures the burial depth of the cables.
When failure sections or unusual sections are found out, AE2000 investigates them, and send the collected information to the mother vessel on real time basis by using the super sonic data link.

Besides the submarine cable laying and maintenance, AE2000 can be actively used in the wide range of fields including following surveys:
  -Power cables and pipelines
  -Fishery resources
  -Sea life
  -Broad range of the environment

The operational concept of AE2000 in the survey on submarine cables and in other applications are shown below.

Survey on fishery
resources and sea life

Survey on a broad range of
the environment

Specifications of AQUA EXPLORER 2000