Tech Files
Vehicles & Products
Saab Seaeye eWROV for Ocean Infinity
Saab Seaeye will sell 10 of its new electric work remotely operated vehicles (eWROV) to Ocean Infinity for its Armada fleet, the largest order in Saab Seaeye’s history. Saab Seaeye is set to expand by 70% to an additional 3,236 sq. m. site in Fareham, UK, by March 2022. The eWROV is the latest addition to Saab Seaeye’s underwater portfolio, the culmination of four years of R&D. With it, Saab Seaeye is among the first companies to produce a full-size electric work-class vehicle with the pledge to deliver the same overall performance as a 250hp hydraulic vehicle.
“Lessening the environmental impact of operations at sea is the main driver behind the development of Armada,” said Dan Hook, Chief Technology Officer, Ocean Infinity. “The all-electric eWROV, in addition to our already low-emission vessels, will enable us to support our customers with infrastructure integrity projects in the most environmentally responsible way. The eWROVs will form an important part of our Armada architecture; through integration with our dynamic payload controller, we’ll be able to deploy and operate them anywhere in the world from our Remote Control Centers.”
DriX USV
The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) adds iXblue DriX Uncrewed Surface Vessel (USV) to its advanced robotic survey means. Deployed from polar research stations and from the British polar research ship RRS Sir David Attenborough, the DriX USV will help BAS conduct multi-disciplinary sciences such as surveying the impact of ocean currents on melting ice flow or mapping the seabed in the polar regions.
A versatile platform able to deploy various sensors with multiple missions’ capabilities, the DriX USV will be equipped with CDT, ACDP, MBES and MetOcean sensors and will help BAS capture data from the extreme polar environments.
Pierre Dutrieux, Ocean and Ice Research Scientist at BAS, explains: “DriX offers a mix of excellent sea-keeping and mission endurance to observe treacherous near-glacier ocean and seabed processes repeatedly with high data accuracy, opening new perspectives for polar discoveries.”
AutoNaut
A 5m zero-carbon uncrewed boat was in late November 2021 welcomed to Penzance after 16 weeks in the Atlantic, where it has spent time at the edge of the continental shelf gathering scientific data on surface currents that govern Europe’s weather. “Such long endurance in that extreme environment proves the robustness of the AutoNaut wave-propulsion system,” said Harry Spedding, General Manager of AutoNaut Ltd. “And it has been a great demonstration to our scientific and commercial stakeholders. With near-silence, and no fuel required, AutoNaut offers a truly economic long endurance ocean going platform.”
The AutoNaut made her way out to the Rockall Trough off the Hebrides carrying out precision transects over moored subsurface arrays of sensors to gather contemporary surface data. Such surface currents data is vital to the scientific understanding of the sub-polar meridional overturning current which governs Europe’s weather.
Other data includes passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) to listen for whales and dolphins, and temperature and salinity of the water. The AutoNaut also gathered wave data from close to two Met Office buoys moored deep offshore.
Saab Seaeye Falcon
A Saab Seaeye Falcon is being deployed by Environment Quality Services (EQS) offshore Angola in preparation for Africa’s first offshore oil platform decommissioning. Dubai-based EQS assesses the integrity of offshore structures using the Falcon for visual inspection and image gathering. The range of offshore structures inspected to assess integrity includes platform (jacket), wellhead, protection dome, pipelines and umbilical. “The Falcon supports EQS in its aim to fulfil specific works in a safe and cost-effective manner by delivering accurate and relevant information,” said Carlos Rodrigues, CTO, EQS. He sees the Falcon as an ideal resource for their specialist work as it can handle an array of cameras, sensors, tooling and complex data gathering systems that can easily be added or changed thanks to the Falcon’s iCON intelligent module-focused distributed control architecture.
Birns Millennium Interconnect
Birns, Inc., introduced the new BIRNS Millennium Interconnect Catalog, a catalog that includes a significant expansion of pin configurations, direct links to downloadable configuration drawings, and comprehensive, strategic additions to product selection and part numbering guides, as well as highly detailed specification tools to walk the user through the selection process. The catalogue features a new, highly detailed RF section, which highlights BIRNS’ recent breakthroughs with low losses and better VSWR, for example: -.32dB loss and 1.17 VSWR at 1.5GHz. It also outlines the company’s new 1V series of 75Ω coax contacts with the same footprint as a 50Ω.
Blue Robotics WetLink
Blue Robotics expanded the WetLink family of products. The WetLink Penetrator (WLP) is Blue Robotics’ next-generation solution for low-cost, high pressure, high reliability sealing of electrical cables as they pass into enclosures or other devices. It’s rated to a depth of 950 meters (3,116 feet) and compared to subsea connectors or penetrators, the WLP is a fraction of the cost while offering validated reliability. The WetLink Penetrator line now has cable gland sizes compatible with cables between 3.7mm to 9.8mm diameter.
The WLP now comes standard on the company’s BlueROV2, T200 Thruster, Lumen lights, Newton Gripper, Ping Echosounder, and in user-assembled kit form.