BeeX recently completed a landmark inspection with a major oil and gas operator, marking a significant advancement in the operational maturity of its autonomous underwater drone technology. The mission focused on a fixed jacket platform, a braced steel structure extending from the platform down to the seabed at 71 meters. This campaign went beyond BeeX’s standard monopile operations, representing the company’s first adaptive autonomous inspection of a 4-legged oil and gas jacket.
With a significant oil and gas hub presence, the client stands as one of the leading companies for oil and gas exploration and production. Having previously used a mix of mini-ROVs and work-class ROVs in routine inspection campaigns, the client company realized that each option had limitations. Mini-ROVs offered low productivity, resulting in extended project schedules. Meanwhile, work-class ROVs provided more versatility and productivity, but required costly vessels and larger crew mobilizations. With these constraints in mind, the company was looking for alternative solutions that could deliver both high-quality data and strong operational efficiency. First requiring BeeX to perform two sea trials prior to the jacket inspection, the company then had confidence to proceed with BeeX’s autonomous drone technology at one their offshore platforms.
For this pilot, BeeX was tasked to inspect a full oil and gas fixed platform, constructed of steel legs that extended down from the platform and piled to the seafloor. It was one of the largest structures BeeX had ever inspected. Its legs hit the depths of 71 meters while its base structure occupied a space of 1225 square meters. Its scale also made it significantly more complex, comprising hundreds of interconnected components across the jacket.
To begin the inspection campaign, BeeX’s autonomous underwater drone A.IKANBILIS was first lowered down via a pedestal crane from the fixed platform. Meanwhile, three BeeX operators guided A.IKANBILIS to inspect the full jacket structure.
Operating in a hover mode, A.IKANBILIS was deployed to conduct a full General Visual Inspection (GVI) of the platform’s key subsea components. The drone kept a consistent standoff distance and imaging parameters through the mission to enable uniform data capture across complex geometries. Currents reached up to 0.8 knots in strength, but A.IKANBILIS remained unchallenged, autonomously adjusting its thruster power to counter surrounding currents. Using a sonar-aided navigation and object tracking system to stabilize the drone’s performance, A.IKANBILIS inspected components of the jacket with computer aided flight and obstacle avoidance. A.IKANBILIS first inspected the exterior parts, such as the jacket’s four legs, risers, and riser clamps. To ensure full coverage, the underwater drone autonomously followed a downward to upward flight path tracking each structure. Meanwhile, riser clamps were inspected manually through operator control due to their unique shape.
Inspecting the rest of the jacket’s components, A.IKANBILIS navigated in and out of the jacket's steel structures. The drone's flight path was optimized and tracked through an onboard navigation system to follow the simplest but most effective routes, preventing tether entanglement. Components were inspected along their entire lengths, with special attention to clamps, braces, and joints where early signs of fatigue or displacement typically appear. A total of three j-tubes, three hundred anodes, two tube-like caissons, and one hundred fifty horizontal and vertical cross- steel braces that cut through the structure were inspected. Cathodic Protection stabs were also taken in ten predefined locations on client drawings, where corrosion levels were measured through a cathodic protection sensor mounted onto A.IKANBILIS. Post-job, the client received a complete geo-referenced anomaly and inspection report through BeeX’s proprietary data reporting portal, Sambal UI.
A.IKANBILIS’ efficiency and productivity allowed for the project’s completion in 4.5 operating days with just one single shift. The client was impressed with BeeX’s data quality and autonomous drone productivity. An executive from the client’s innovation team shared, “This was our first experience with a hovering inspection drone, and we were positively surprised by its autonomous performance. Given the limited setup on site, other inspection systems would have struggled to deliver the level of data quality and speed we experienced. BeeX’s drone autonomy as a differentiator has real value for oil and gas inspections. ” This mission also marked an important step forward for BeeX. It pushed the team’s next-generation autonomy beyond monopile work and into a more complex oil and gas environment. Despite the depth and structural challenges, the vehicle handled the entire deployment smoothly, reinforcing the readiness of BeeX technology for larger and more demanding offshore inspection tasks.
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