Nippon Steel Engineering Proposes Roadmap for Practical Application of Unmanned Underwater Inspection System for Offshore Wind Power Facilities

Nippon Steel Engineering Co., Ltd. (President: Yukito Ishiwa, hereinafter NSE), in collaboration with Toyo Engineering Corporation (President: Eiji Hosoi, hereinafter TOYO), FullDepth Inc. (President: Satoshi Yoshiga, hereinafter FullDepth), and Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd. (President: Takahiro Mori, hereinafter OKI), has announced the proposal of a roadmap for the practical application of a system to automate underwater inspection work for offshore wind power facilities using AUVs*1 (Autonomous Underwater Vehicles) and other equipment. This proposal was made within the "AUV Utilization Demonstration Project" in which the four companies jointly participated.

Overview of the Demonstration Test

In preparing this roadmap, a demonstration test was conducted in Numazu City, Shizuoka Prefecture, in October 2025, and multifaceted studies were advanced with the premise of commercializing the unmanned underwater inspection system. Through demonstration tests of unmanned underwater inspection using a combination of AUVs (Autonomous Underwater Vehicles), ROVs*2 (Remotely Operated Vehicles), and ASVs*3 (Autonomous Surface Vehicles) for video recording (monitoring and recording) of observation targets*4 and sonar (acoustic exploration), technical and operational challenges for the future autonomous and unmanned underwater inspection work were identified.

(For details on the demonstration test, please refer to this PR video.)

Proposal of a Roadmap for AUV Social Implementation

Based on the knowledge gained from the demonstration test, studies were conducted on the optimal deployment of marine robotics, including system configurations that enable autonomous and unmanned wide-area underwater inspection work by combining AUVs and ASVs. Furthermore, assuming the future vision of unmanned underwater inspection work in 2030 and 2040, milestones for early social implementation were organized, such as continuous technology development and verification, and long-term implementation tests required for practical application, and proposed as a roadmap up to 2030.

Nippon Steel Engineering's Main Initiatives

① Conceptual Study for Commercialization of Maintenance and Inspection Services

To commercialize maintenance and inspection services for offshore wind power operators, it is important to have a "service provider" that covers a wide range of operations, not limited to technical capabilities utilizing marine robotics such as AUVs, but also including the ownership and management of necessary equipment for inspection, training and deployment of equipment operators and engineers, and securing ICT-related services, to provide comprehensive services.

In this project, the roles of service providers and their business models and ecosystems are also being studied and organized, based on the premise of maintenance and inspection work for offshore wind power facilities.