Subsea technology companies, Newton Research Labs Inc., and Sonardyne International Ltd, UK. today announced they have completed tests to integrate Newton Labs’ underwater laser scanners with Sonardyne’s acoustically-aided inertial navigation system for underwater vehicles, SPRINT-Mapper.
The milestone paves the way for greater adoption by industry of mobile laser mapping technology to survey seafloor sites and subsea structures, and eliminates many of the challenges currently faced by users when attempting to configure advanced sensor technologies from different vendors prior to mobilising equipment offshore.
Newton and Sonardyne entered into a formal collaboration agreement in late 2017 to develop and promote dynamic underwater laser mapping, a rapidly emerging survey technique which significantly reduces the time needed to carry out inspections using underwater vehicles, including ROVs and manned submersibles.
The work carried out at Newton’s facility in Seattle in January by Sonardyne and Newton engineers included configuring the inertial and time synchronisation data output from SPRINT-Mapper to pass directly into Newton’s high performance range of underwater laser scanners.
Now, an underwater vehicle fitted with a Newton underwater laser, is able to capture high density point clouds of subsea assets and environments whilst on the move.
As the vehicle moves around the site, the SPRINT-Mapper hardware, also fitted to the vehicle, simultaneously collects acoustic range and inertial navigation data. On completion of the survey, the raw navigational data is post-processed and merged with the laser data to produce a georeferenced 3D point cloud from which centimetric level or better engineering measurements can be taken.
By adopting a dynamic platform such as an ROV navigated using SPRINT-Mapper, the high-resolution laser data is no longer constrained by a stationary deployment location which means an entire site can now be surveyed quickly and with the flexibility to overcome adverse conditions such as visibility. As the underwater vehicle does not have to come into contact with the seabed at the survey site, it can move to scan any target of interest from a variety of perspectives. This results in archaeological surveys, pipeline and free span inspections, structural integrity monitoring and one of the most demanding of all survey tasks, pipeline metrology, all being conducted in much less time than static laser scanning.
Edward Moller, Global Business Manager at Sonardyne said, “The performance of our SPRINT-Mapper in now providing centimetric wide-area navigation and millimetric local navigation, whilst simultaneously providing motion compensation for laser scanners, is remarkable. Combined with the high resolution of Newton laser scanners, mobile laser mapping is now a real game-changer.”
[blockquote author=” John Bramblet, President and CEO at Newton Labs “]”Integration of Newton Labs underwater lasers with Sonardyne SPRINT technology allows our high, 0.1 mm, resolution scanners to perform virtually any laser scanning project, whether it is full field scanning, pipeline scanning or high resolution corrosion and crack detection all from a mobile platform.”[/blockquote]
Subsea technology company, Sonardyne International Ltd, has today unveiled its smallest ever underwater target tracking system, Micro-Ranger 2. The move was made on the opening day of the Underwater Intervention conference and exhibition in New Orleans where the company is showcasing its diving and marine robotics product line-up.
Micro-Ranger 2 is Sonardyne’s third Ultra-Short Baseline (USBL) acoustic tracking system to be built around its Sixth-Generation (6G) hardware and Wideband 2 digital acoustic technology platform. But whereas Ranger 2 and Mini-Ranger 2 are designed for complex and deep water survey and positioning operations, the new entry-level model in Sonardyne’s USBL family introduces features that make it ideal for supporting diving and small vehicle operations in rivers, lakes and coastal waters.
In this sector of the market, users often have no prior experience of acoustic tracking technology so ease-of-setup and ease-of-use have been key areas of engineering focus during the development of the new Micro-Ranger 2. The system’s transceiver, MRT, is extremely small and light and can be deployed from the side of a small boat, pontoon, or even a USV. Its design provides all-round acoustic tracking coverage, so is ideal for tracking targets in shallow water all the way to the surface.
Users then simply need to connect their computer and external GPS signal to the system’s interface unit and attach a transponder to each target they want to monitor the position of. With the transceiver lowered into the water, tracking can begin.
Sonardyne is including in, the base price of the system, one of its popular Nano transponders. Measuring just over 150mm tall and weighing 225 grams in water, Nano can be fitted to a diver or small AUV without noticeably affecting dynamics through the water. A built-in depth sensor aids USBL positioning accuracy and a rechargeable battery provides a day of continuous use. For tracking larger targets, Micro-Ranger 2 can be specified with a WSM 6+ transponder which is able to be powered directly from a vehicle to provide uninterrupted tracking.
As standard, the bundled software comes with many of the powerful features common to the established Ranger 2 USBL product family. To unlock further capability, the optional Marine Robotics software pack allows users to both track, communicate and command an underwater vehicle fitted with a Nano AvTrak 6 transceiver.
Speaking at the launch, Ioseba Tena, Global Business Manager for Sonardyne said, “We’re confident that Micro-Ranger 2 will quickly establish itself as the price and performance benchmark for underwater tracking technology in its class, and prove a worthy successor to the Sonardyne Scout USBL it supersedes.” He added, “It’s great to be here in New Orleans with diving contractors and vehicle owners and operators from across the Gulf Coast states, introducing them to our very latest technology that can improve the safety and efficiency of their underwater operations.”