FIG. 2.

Industrial data show the increasing demand of offshore robots and the harsh conditions of an offshore site close to the United Kingdom coast. Image in (A) is inspired by Loffman⁷ (data from Westwood Douglas). The circles show AUV demand analysis; color and size of the dots represent the increase in AUV units demand in the oil and gas sector. The plot also shows an increase in ROV days (black left axis) and investments in US dollars (violet right axis). (B) Shows the location of an industrial moored buoy. The mooring is equipped to collect wave data (C, D). The location of the buoy is close to the coast, yet the wave data indicate challenging weather conditions. The Douglas Sea Scale defines rough sea states as those with 2.5 m wave height. The cyan area indicates the 2.5 m threshold, exceeded 10% of the times. The operational boundaries for ROVs deployment are 2.5 m wave height and 8 s wave period, depending on location and vessel.¹²⁴ The dashed line in (D) highlights the 8 s wave period threshold. Data courtesy: EDF Color images are available online.