When your car makes an unusual sound, you know something is up—it might even signal a problem.
Sound offers a unique window into equipment health. Whether it’s the hum of a vessel’s propeller or the hiss of a subsea valve, every sound tells a story.
For subsea equipment, a key question is where the sound is coming from and which parts are involved.
In air, acoustic cameras use sound mapping, a beamforming technique, creating heatmaps of sound levels overlaid on video. They help identify noisy car components, wind turbine faults, and compressed air leaks in industrial facilities.
Yet, no commercial technology existed for underwater sound mapping—until now.
Over five years, we developed SUSI (Smart Underwater Sound Imager), a hydrophone array designed to detect and visualize sound from subsea equipment. Mountable on underwater vehicles, SUSI has evolved for better accuracy and usability. SUSI has been verified at two deep water sites and is ready to uncover the link between equipment health and emitted sound.
This talk explores the journey of this emerging technology and its potential to transform subsea condition monitoring.
<figure><img title=”Screenshot 2025-05-14 094522-transformed.png” src=”https://cdn.filestackcontent.com/RuQ4UTqSjCL3Dyd3E1eu” alt=”Sound map showing thruster noise from mini ROV” width=”436″ height=”418″ /> <figcaption>Figure 1. Sound map showing thruster noise from mini ROV. </figcaption> </figure>
