The deployment of semi-submersible production and storage oil platform "Deepsea No.1" signifies a significant leap in China's ability to develop deep-water oil and gas fields and to construct deep-water ocean engineering equipment. However, due to prolonged offshore operations, deep-water oil and gas platforms face environmental challenges such as corrosion from seawater, marine organism attachment, wind and wave flow. As a result, the development of underwater operation and maintenance of deep-water platform structures, including cleaning, inspection, and repair, has become a key factor for ensuring long-term safe operation. Currently, shallow-water platforms mainly rely on divers for operations. With increasing water depths, the use of underwater robots for inspection, maintenance and repair (IMR) has become an inevitable trend. Nevertheless, traditional remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) are expensive and difficult to operate because of their sizes. This paper mainly summarizes novel underwater IMR robots for marine engineering applications developed in the past decade, reviews domestic and international status of underwater maintenance robots, and discuses some typical case studies. Finally, common key technical issues of new robots and the trend for intelligent technology development in underwater maintenance robots are addressed .

deepwater oil and gas platform  /  underwater robots for inspection  /  intelligent technology