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Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) is not a term that is well-known in technology circles. However, this highly specialized category of vehicles used cutting-edge technologies to make groundbreaking discoveries and mind-blowing exploratory research every day in oceans around the world.
AUVs predate their famous ariel cousins UAVs, aka drones, by decades but have so far remained in use in very niche fields.
But as their use cases keep growing by the day, AUV manufacturers seek to deliver more value by integrating with the latest technology. And this opens the door for some serious, high-value deal-making for service providers.
AUV Market Overview & Trending Use Cases
The bulk of the growth in the AUV sector is expected to come from the Americas region (about 62%) owing to its technological capabilities and defense priorities. However, the EMEA region, is not far behind (with 28% and rising), partly due to the political sensitivity of this region.
APAC comes a distant third at 10%. But there are signs that the region is showing renewed interest, especially in the region leader India, where new AUV startups have popped up in recent years.
The Global Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Market is projected to reach USD 2.48 Bn by 2030 at a CAGR of 14.87% from USD 0.62 Billion in 2019.
The key drivers of this growth are:
- Rising application of autonomous underwater vehicles in the oil and gas industry
- Development and incorporation of advanced technologies in AUVs
- The rising demand for the systems in the navy and defense sectors majorly attributes to the AUV market growth
- Growing maritime security concerns have also augmented the demand for AUVs for underwater monitoring
Naturally, the above use cases require stakeholders to leverage digital full-stack capabilities. This includes AI/ML development, data management & analytics, design & development, and cloud solutions.
Digital Service Provider Opportunities in the AUV Market
AUV usage for navigation, communication, Collision, and other obstacle avoidance is creating demand across various new-age roles like System Engineer, UAV Engineer, Automation Engineer, and Automation engineer.
Overall, Draup’s research indicates the technology focus areas of this sector to be:
- Artificial Intelligence
- Internet of Things
- Robotics
- Machine Learning
- Global Positioning System
Investment dollars are pouring into the above technologies as industry stakeholders recognize them to the key drivers empowering futuristic AUVs that come equipped with:
- Autonomous navigation
- AI Communication
- Underwater obstacle avoidance
- Hazard Detection & Tracking
- Deep ocean surveys
- AI-Powered Mine-Hunting
And other in-deman features.
Key Players Active In The AUV Market
Very interesting and truly revolutionary innovations are taking place in this industry.
Kongsberg, the IT group that delivers high-tech solutions to companies in the oil & gas industry, has partnered with the US military to develop AI integrated communication system for faster data transfer and signal detection for deep-sea defense activities.
There are active efforts by R&D teams to use AI to extract and exploit actionable patterns among an ocean of data using big data and deep learning technology for signal detection in underwater exploration.
Underwater obstacle avoidance & mine hunting, another key area of concern among military and civil underwater operators, has also received a fillip thanks to rapidly improving Computer Vision & SONAR capabilities.
Envitia, as the prime contractor, is working with BAE Systems Applied Intelligence to deliver Artificial Intelligence for Mine Hunting.
Across geographies, we have zeroed in on the below key workloads that service providers can target:
- Designing and implementation of new image enhancement algorithms (dehazing, contrast enhancement, denoising, turbulence mitigation, inpainting, etc.) in CUDA for real-time GPU processing
- Development of algorithms to collect behavioral (system calls) and biometric data related to user interaction with a computer for identification of malicious insider threat
- Designing the battery management system of the AUV for efficient power distribution and longer run time
And many more focused use cases that have potential to breed long-term contracts.
Moreover, the below diagram captures the key opportunity areas for capturing sales deals in the AUV sector.
Download the whitepaper to read our in-depth findings and to gain a comprehensive overview of the AUV ecosystem.
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