A Dutch ship designer has unveiled a prototype for an autonomous underwater maintenance dredger (AUMD).
C-Job Naval Architects said the unique blueprint is aimed at maintenance work in ports.
"The team took advantage of the opportunities and out-of-the-box solutions autonomous vessels provide such as completely submerging a dredging vessel," it added.
The vessel requires significantly less power than a conventional dredger and comes equipped with a 16MWh battery pack that provides enough power for up to 12 hours of operation, the company said.
Rolph Hijdra, autonomous vessels research lead at C-Job, said: “When we developed this exciting design, we performed a comparison study with a conventional trailing suction hopper dredger.
"This showed that the autonomous underwater maintenance dredger requires 55% less propulsion power and by submersing the vessel we could reduce the suction head cutting the dredge pump power demand by 80%.”
It features the same hopper volume as a traditional dredger, but is 20% shorter in length.
"According to our research, even with a conservative approach, we found that with the AUMD shipowners can expect nearly twice as much profit after 15 years," Hijdra added.
"Though there’s a higher initial investment, operational costs are much lower which makes it an interesting option for companies to consider.”
