ROVs – remotely operated vehicles – are a huge part of the offshore and industrial world, yet remain practically unknown outside of it. Today, out at sea, hundreds of these remotely controlled robots are at work – inspecting pipelines, installing subsea engineering structures, cleaning offshore platforms, and maintaining mooring lines.

The underwater engineering installations they service are hidden engineering wonders. These complex and sophisticated structures rest on the seabed, linked by pipelines stretching for miles across what is known as a subsea field. Completely invisible to the human eye, these stations operate in the upstream energy sector – extracting and processing oil and gas, then sending it to shore through vast pipeline networks.

PaleBlue engineers began working with ROVs in 2008, building the first ROV simulator at Aker Solutions. It was called MOS – the Marine Operation Simulator. This tool was designed to perform design verification and accessibility checks for ROVs on underwater engineering structures being created in CAD.

The simulated accessibility check was developed as an improvement over the physical one, which still exists today – carried out in a massive warehouse, where a full-size replica of an ROV is suspended from a crane and moved around to ensure it can reach all panels and fit into every hatch required for a real mission.

Now in 2025, simulators for underwater robots have become a major tool for both engineering and training. I’ve had the privilege of contributing to several ROV simulation systems, and our PaleBlue ROV platform is now used across the globe – from training at ROV pilot schools in India to subsea engineering teams in the United States.

All of this progress has been driven by the goal of enabling better engineering through simulation. Yet even today, some accessibility checks are still done the old-fashioned way – with a mockup ROV in a warehouse.

PaleBlue has a solution: Subsea Access Simulator makes design verification and subsea access checks a breeze. Used by professionals in subsea engineering, it becomes the go-tool for high efficiency in subsea engineering work.