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]

Ocean science company, Sonardyne International Ltd., has announced that its deep water acoustic tracking technology, Ranger 2, has been installed on one of the most modern vessels in the German research fleet, the Maria S. Merian.  The announcement was made at the annual meeting of the Partnership for Observation of the Global Oceans (POGO), which this year is hosted by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, USA.

Delivered through Sonardyne’s in-country agent, Scholz Ingenieur Büro GmbH, the system was chosen as a replacement for the vessel’s existing third-party Ultra-Short BaseLine (USBL) acoustic equipment to enable science teams to precisely track the position of deep-water science systems including unmanned robotic platforms and seafloor landers to beyond seven kilometres.

Operated by the German Research Vessels Control Station at the Institute of Geology, University of Hamburg, the Maria S. Merian is equipped to conduct sea bottom, water column and atmospheric observations in the Mediterranean, North Atlantic and, thanks to its ice-breaking reinforced hull, the subpolar Norwegian Sea.

A key factor in the institute’s decision to select Ranger 2 for the Maria S. Merian was the system’s extensive track record in delivering fast, accurate and repeatable positioning for science operations in all water depths and operating conditions. Central to this has been German scientists’ first-hand experience of the Ranger 2 systems fitted to the UK’s research vessels, including the RRS James Cook, which has been a long-term user of Sonardyne’s USBL technology.

As part of the upgrade, the Maria S. Merian has been fitted with Sonardyne’s GyroUSBL instrument which incorporates a USBL transceiver and high-grade inertial navigation sensor in the unit. This combination maximises precision by eliminating common sources of USBL system error such as lever arm offsets, pole bending and ship flexing. During science missions, it will be deployed and recovered using a Sonardyne deployment machine and used to track Wideband Sub-Mini 6+ transponders attached to scientific equipment in the water.

Speaking about the contract, Paul Griffiths, Sales Manager for Sonardyne in the UK said that with within the global science community, Ranger 2 is now firmly established as a key enabler for sustained ocean observations. He added, “We’re delighted that the scientists and crew of the Maria S. Merian have joined the other international research institutes who trust our technology to support their important work.”

Jan Wommelsdorff of Scholz Ingenieur Büro GmbH “This is the first Sonardyne Ranger 2 GyroUSBL to be fitted to a German research ship and is a key technology for enabling the country’s scientists to work in demanding deep sea environments.”

For more information on Sonardyne’s Ranger 2 USBL tracking system click here.

If you have been reading these blogs you’ll know by now that Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) have come of age.

They are able to gather hydrographic and oceanographic data at unmatched resolution with great stability and can be programmed to do so at the sweet spot for the sensors that they carry. For the most part, commercially available AUVs are programmed to follow a set route of waypoints and tasks. There’s no reasoning, they simply follow the plan. There’s no adapting of a mission’s goals to accommodate changes to plans. And when working with multiple AUVs, each one is operated independently and kept at arm’s length of others to keep them from interfering with each other. But, all the talk today is of AUVs working in collaboration as a swarm and working together as interconnected subsea networks. These new concepts of operation raise new questions. Let’s look at this in more detail.

What are the challenges?

Navies are interested in deploying AUV swarms to help survey, classify and map the littoral with high accuracy and at a fast tempo. These AUVs will sense the environment and then they will optimise their mission by processing the data from their on-board sensors. How many AUVs will be in the swarm? Will they be organised in squads? Will we be able to operate all the AUVs from a single command and control station? How will they interact with the operator?

In the Ocean Science community and the Oil and Gas industry, the talk is of interconnected subsea networks where instruments gather data over prolonged periods of time and AUVs are used to harvest the data and help with network maintenance tasks. The AUVs will be deployed for long periods of time, or even permanently, and will need to travel over the whole network autonomously without human control. Will the AUVs be able to navigate without external aids? Will they be able to gather the data and share it with a central node? Will they operate from a subsea garage? Will they work with other AUVs?

Subsea there’s no network of satellites to work with. Instead AUVs need to position and communicate using other means. Ultra-Short Baseline (USBL) acoustic systems, such as Ranger 2, are a good alternative to help localise the AUVs and have also been successfully deployed to communicate with AUVs equipped with transceivers, such as AvTrak 6. The AUV can be tracked from the surface and their navigation solution is operated from the surface using the same signal that is used to track it.

Too many systems = Congested acoustic operations

If each AUV requires a USBL system, we soon run out of effective frequencies from which to operate a swarm. Or we are required to use a single frequency band and limit access to each AUV to agreed time slots so that they don’t talk over each other. This is what is happening now, the community is using Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) to provide each AUV with a time slot in which it can communicate. Some published results showed that in a fleet of eight AUVs, each AUV only had a window every 6 minutes in which to communicate. A very ineffective use of the bandwidth which doesn’t scale!

Enter 6G acoustics – One system, multiple tasks

“When we designed our 6G acoustic framework we had two words in mind: Scalable and Robust. In a congested space it’s easy to run out of bandwidth in which to communicate and our customers who often have to operate networks of transponders in the seabed could not afford to waste time while there’s real work to be done. We therefore introduced a flexible protocol of commands to enable flexible communications”, Darryl Newborough, Technical Director at Sonardyne, gave me some insights as to how it all started. “Our Wideband 2 signals enable us to incorporate data with every update – and the user can control just how much data they want to send. So the same USBL system that is used to track the AUVs can also tell them where they are. No need for additional modems.”

The ability to send data with each update is very powerful, now we can share mission plans with AUVs, alter their goals and so much more. The AUVs in turn can provide status updates and even send information to the user. The protocols are really effective, easy to use and completely applicable to AUV swarms. Here’s the list:

Discovery: All transceivers in range will let you know that they are there, their address and how far away they are.

Single Interrogate: A transceiver can interrogate any other transceiver exclusively. Carry out an individual USBL fix or share data effectively with a single asset. Without disturbing others… this includes AUV to AUV

Common Interrogate: A transceiver can interrogate all the other transceivers. In doing so it can share information with all of them, meaning that the USBL on the surface can let all the AUVs know where they are. Each AUV in turn could then provide an update of its individual location to the surface.

Modem: If at any point the data transfer required exceeds simple update messages, the transceivers can establish a modem connection and transfer large volumes of data peer to peer.

Choose your Group: Transceivers can be organised into groups such that Group A receives the information pertinent to that group and Group B receives that which is relevant to it. They can also switch to another group on stride, meaning the AUVs can find the right group to have a private conversation J

Using 6G, navies can organise AUV swarms into increasing number of squads. Squads can communicate with other squads, and operators can each take control of a squad or direct the whole swarm of AUVs!

And ocean scientists can mobilise AUVs permanently as part of an ocean observatory, enabling the AUVs to use the ocean observatory as a position reference and to exchange information with shore via a remotely connected node.

In oil and gas, the AUV will explore the subsea field and navigate relative to acoustic 6G nodes in the infrastructure and exchange data at the same time. Should they run into another AUV, they will be able to exchange notes!

Future ready

Whether you are looking to coordinate a swarm of autonomous seismic nodes, persistent monitoring gliders, military AUV squads or life resident AUVs, the powerful 6G architecture is ready to support your development. We offer awesome developer courses and can help you with your design. Get in touch and let’s make your AUV swarm happen!

Author: Ioseba Tena – Global Business Manager – Marine Robotic Systems