Protecting data cables and power lines beneath the world’s oceans is a daunting task that traditional methods can hardly meet. The U-SHIELD project (Underwater Safeguarding High-value Infrastructure Enforcing Lightweight Drones) aims to develop solutions to detect potential threats early with the help of “guardian drones” – and to neutralize them if necessary.
Large-scale offshore wind farms are becoming a key driver of the energy transition and the fight against climate change. Countries such as China, the UK and Germany, as well as North and Baltic Sea neighbors like the Netherlands and Denmark, are investing heavily in harnessing wind at scale. Yet all this power must still be delivered reliably to shore.
Out of sight, out of mind?
Although power lines – just like data cables and pipelines – on the seabed and the connections of offshore wind farms to the mainland affect the lives of millions of people, very few take real notice of them. Yet in times of international crisis, this underwater infrastructure has increasingly become part of threat scenarios – as the attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines almost exactly four years ago made abundantly clear.
In Denmark, the U-SHIELD project is developing a concept to better protect this critical infrastructure with unmanned systems. Long-range “guardian drones” will patrol sensitive areas around the clock, because only early detection of potential threats creates the chance to intervene.
Innovation Fund Denmark
Over the next three years, suitable technologies will be developed and tested under real-world conditions. In addition to project coordinator Teledyne RESON and the companies Copenhagen Subsea and Vattenfall, teams from Aalborg University, the Technical University of Denmark and the University of Southern Denmark are also involved.
“The climate-friendly transformation of economy and society makes us more dependent on complex energy systems beneath the sea surface. That is why we must also proactively contribute to their protection,” explains Cecilie Brøkner, CEO of the Innovation Fund Denmark, which is contributing the majority (around €3.5 million) of the total budget of approximately €4.9 million (36.5 million Danish kroner). “The U-SHIELD project contributes to the development of technologies that make our society more resilient against threats to the systems on which we all depend – from energy supply to communication.”
U-SHIELD highlights the crucial role autonomous systems can play in safeguarding critical infrastructure – a topic that will also be front and center at XPONENTIAL Europe in Düsseldorf.
> This article was created in cooperation with Drones – The Magazine for the Drone Economy. www.drones-magazin.de
