To improve the monitoring of subsea installations Total and Chevron have tasked a team of a dozen researchers for building an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) by 2016.The intelligent submarine will be capable of inspecting wellheads and pipelines over tens of kilometers, in 3,000 meters of water. It would also be capable of detecting anomalies independently, providing real-time warnings and transmitting large amounts of data. “Today, remote operated vehicles (ROV) used for monitoring are tied back to workboats by cables and have to be guided,” explains Frédéric Garnaud, Head of Deep Offshore Development Project in E&P's R&D Division. But Total and Chevron have even bigger plans: Within six or seven years, the AUV will be able to perform work on installations.