Skarv Technologies AS
Trondheim maker of hovering CORAX 600 and CORAX Endurance AUVs with 4K optics and onboard classification for MCM, seabed mapping and aquaculture.
Skarv Technologies AS is a Norwegian company that designs and builds autonomous underwater vehicles, subsea cameras and seabed-data software for defence and commercial maritime customers. Four PhDs from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and its Applied Underwater Robotics Laboratory founded the company in 2019. It has 16 employees at its office and workshop at Stiklestadveien 3 in Trondheim, where the vehicles are designed, built and wet-tested. Skarv develops its hardware and software in-house and sells its vehicles, cameras and software either as complete systems or as separate components for integration on other platforms. It also configures custom solutions for particular customer missions.
The founders set out to build a vertically integrated data-collection platform that produces usable information in real time instead of after long post-processing. Early work included a marine-debris survey of the Store Lungegardsvann seabed in Bergen and machine-vision inspection of aquaculture nets. In 2023 Skarv was selected for NATO's DIANA defence innovation accelerator, and it has taken part in NATO's REPMUS exercise in Portugal every year since 2024.
The product line is the CORAX family of hovering, fully actuated AUVs built for close-range optical and acoustic seabed mapping. The CORAX 600, which Skarv launched at Oceanology International in March 2026, measures about 1.9 x 0.5 x 0.4 m and weighs about 50 kg. It is rated to 600 m depending on sensor configuration, travels at 0 to 1.5 m/s and runs for up to 12 hours on two redundant smart lithium-ion batteries. The CORAX Endurance is about 2.4 m long, weighs about 74 kg, carries four batteries and runs for up to 24 hours. Both vehicles carry GNSS, a forward-looking sonar, a Doppler velocity log, a sound-velocity sensor and a pressure sensor. They support seabed tracking, automatic heading and depth, sonar-based collision avoidance, waypoint following and station keeping. They communicate over Wi-Fi and Gigabit Ethernet, with Iridium and a tether of up to 500 m as options. The standard imaging payload is Skarv's 4K camera with its ZeBra strobe light. Options include side-scan or synthetic aperture sonar, an acoustic modem with USBL, a 3D forward-looking sonar, a hyperspectral imager and a guest port for third-party sensors. Each system ships with a topside operator station, an operator PC, a vehicle controller and transport cases, and can be run by a small crew.
The Skarv underwater camera is also sold on its own for AUV and ROV integrators. It has a 4K, 1.1-inch global-shutter sensor, an 83.9-degree horizontal field of view in water, a 1,000 m depth rating, a weight of 1.2 kg, onboard compute, a strobe trigger and a Gigabit Ethernet interface. Skarv's software processes the vehicle data. Its tools cover real-time deep-learning detection, segmentation and classification, structure-from-motion photogrammetry and georeferenced orthomosaics, underwater image enhancement, hyperspectral processing and side-scan and multibeam analysis. Web portals let customers explore the results. Skarv contributes modules to the open-source Neptus command-and-control framework from the LSTS laboratory and offers a physics-based CORAX simulation toolbox for operator training and mission rehearsal.
Applications include mine countermeasures, where the vehicle surveys with side-scan sonar and then hovers beside contacts for optical classification. The same capability is used for ISR, critical-infrastructure protection and harbour security, as well as pipeline and cable inspection, offshore energy foundations, environmental baseline surveys, UXO and debris detection, and aquaculture site and mooring inspection. In one large optical survey in Nordland, a CORAX covered 40,000 square metres, or about 10 km of video transects with a 4 m swath, at depths down to 100 m, and its 4K video was mosaicked online. A long-endurance CORAX was delivered to Ava Ocean to search for Arctic scallops in the Barents Sea. It processes images onboard and adapts its search pattern so that harvesting can be targeted. Skarv says it has delivered vehicles to navy and commercial customers. In 2026 Skarv and Maritime Robotics ran combined CORAX 600 and Mariner X USV operations, first at the IXES exercise at Mongstad in June and then at NATO REPMUS 2026 in Troia and Sesimbra. In these operations the USV corrected the AUV's position acoustically and relayed contact reports to shore, so no mother ship or divers were needed.
Primary type & automation activities this supplier delivers:
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Contact Skarv Technologies AS
WEBSITE
https://skarvtech.comHEADQUARTERS
Norway
Company Facts
Founded
2019
Primary Role
Manufacturer
Company Size
-
Primary Region
Europe
Annual Sales
-
Funding Stage
-
Funding Total
-
Keywords
- Skarv Technologies AS
- CORAX 600
- CORAX Endurance
- hovering AUV
- opto-acoustic seabed mapping
- mine countermeasures
- 4K subsea camera
- underwater photogrammetry
- NATO DIANA
- Neptus
- scallop survey
- Manufacturer
- Software/Algorithm
- Custom Manufacturer
- Unmanned Marine Vehicle
- Perception & Vision
- AUV
- Defense & Security
- Agriculture
- Oil
