Kongsberg's HUGIN Endurance Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Completes Factory Acceptance Tests

Kongsberg Discovery's business area, Kongsberg Discovery, has announced the completion of factory acceptance testing for the first production system of their long-range Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) called HUGIN Endurance.

Sea trials for the first production unit began in September 2023 and concluded with a successful demonstration of the AUV's capabilities to the customer in March 2024.

President Martin Wien Fjell says that the HUGIN Endurance program has attracted interest both from the defense sector and commercial operators.

HUGIN Endurance is designed to accommodate various payloads for seabed mapping, oceanography, offshore wind park surveys, and subsea infrastructure surveillance.

The system comes fitted with wide-swath high-resolution synthetic aperture sonar (HISAS 1032 Dual RX), multibeam echo sounder (EM 2040 MkII), sub-bottom profiling system, colour camera, laser profiler, magnetometer and environmental sensors collecting data such as conductivity, temperature, sound speed, methane, and CO2 and O2 concentration.

In addition, the vehicle includes a large configurable volume that can be used to carry a mixture of batteries and custom payloads as needed.  The system is designed to allow autonomous operations directly from shore, and with a full complement of batteries, it can spend up to 15 days at sea, traveling up to 2200 km (1200 nm).