The agreement gives QYSEA a chance to test its underwater technology alongside Aramco’s existing marine research and monitoring work. 

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Aramco has been collecting information about the waters around its operations for decades. The company says it has more than 50 years of ocean data and now uses a mix of field research, satellites, submersibles and AI to study marine environments. Its 2025 sustainability reporting describes work on coral reefs and offshore habitats, as well as research into seagrass ecosystems using scuba surveys, environmental DNA, remotely operated vehicles and hydrodynamic modelling. Aramco also started a project in 2025 to monitor marine species across three natural coral reefs and six artificial reefs in the Arabian Gulf. QYSEA's new agreement comes into a programme that already has people and technology working underwater, rather than starting a new monitoring effort from scratch. 

QYSEA signed the memorandum of understanding with Aramco's Green Energy & Environmental Policy Department on July 14. The companies plan to look at underwater robotics, AI-assisted inspection and digital marine systems for biodiversity and habitat monitoring. QYSEA also says the work could cover offshore energy, marine infrastructure, ports and coastal assets. No contract value, equipment order or deployment schedule has been disclosed. At this point, the agreement gives QYSEA a route into discussions about how its systems could be used in Aramco's marine and offshore operations. 

The Technology Beneath Aramco’s Marine Research 

The two companies have already had contact through Aramco's technology programme. In May 2025, QYSEA took part in Aramco's Emerging Technologies in the Energy Sector Forum in Shanghai, where it presented its remotely operated vehicles for offshore inspection and subsea work. Its presentation included visual algorithms, multi-sensor systems, measurement and autonomous navigation. Those capabilities are important because QYSEA is trying to make its ROVs useful for more than sending live video back to an operator. The systems are designed to help collect measurements and location information during an underwater mission, which can then be used for inspection and monitoring. Aramco itself has been developing and deploying underwater robots for years, including its internally developed Shallow Water Inspection and Monitoring Robot, or SWIM-R, which was field tested for pipeline inspection in 2017. 

There are several practical uses for this kind of equipment. An ROV can inspect an underwater site without putting a diver in the water, and a repeatable robotic survey can make it easier to compare observations from the same area at different times. QYSEA's systems include navigation and positioning tools, inspection functions and measurement capabilities, with environmental monitoring among the applications the company promotes. Aramco's Marine Department already deploys underwater robots to inspect subsea assets, meaning QYSEA is entering a field in which the energy company has considerable experience of its own. The interesting part of the MOU is therefore not the arrival of underwater robotics at Aramco, but whether QYSEA's particular systems can add something to technology Aramco already uses. 

QYSEA is also putting attention into the people and services needed to operate the equipment in Saudi Arabia. On September 24, it held its first Saudi Maritime Technology Partner Forum in Al Khobar with Aramco representatives, local partners and service providers. The company demonstrated its X1 and E-MASTER NAVI systems and discussed work in offshore energy, marine infrastructure, ports, coastal assets and environmental monitoring. Training, product support and cooperation with Saudi service providers were also part of the discussions. That matters because industrial ROVs need trained operators and technical support once they move from demonstrations into regular work, particularly when they are being used around subsea infrastructure or for repeated environmental surveys. 

The MOU is still an early agreement, but there is a clear reason to follow what happens next. Aramco already has years of marine research and its own experience with underwater robotics, while QYSEA is developing systems aimed at inspection, measurement and marine monitoring. The real test will be whether the technology moves into actual operations and becomes useful enough to be used regularly. Until then, the agreement gives QYSEA an opportunity to prove its technology in a demanding industrial setting, while Aramco can assess whether these systems can add something useful to the marine monitoring and inspection work it already does. 

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