Certification of Unmanned Underwater Vehicles and Working Machines - Safety and Reliability under Deep-Sea and Offshore Conditions -

Certification of all type of underwater vehicles and working machines is performed to increase reliability and safety of single components and complete systems. Base for certification are the rules for Underwater Technology developed by Germanischer Lloyd. Certification of components and machines are usually performed in scheduled phases, starting with examination of drawings and documents, followed by surveillance of construction and finalized by functional testing and several trials witnessed by GL's surveyors. Technical reliability and safety can be achieved by competent maintenance and periodical surveys. Certification can be extended to systems, where certified component's interaction, often of high complexity, has to be considered in particular. Here again, reliability and safety is gained and maintained by repeated testing of components and the complete system during operational life.