Sonardyne, Guidance Marine Partner To Aid Navigation

Two maritime technology companies announced Sept. 11 that they are collaborating to develop a system that will help unmanned autonomous vessels navigate even when losing their connections to global navigation satellite systems.

Sonardyne International Ltd.’s underwater positioning systems and Guidance Marine Ltd.’s relative surface positioning systems will be integrated in a single solution called the AutoMINDER (Autonomous MarIne Navigation in Denied EnviRonments) project, which will create a common interface structure and allow the various sensors to be fed into one platform.

Sonarydne is contributing its SPRINT-Nav all-in-one subsea navigation instrument to the system. The device combines its Syrinx DVL SPRINT INS solution with a high-accuracy pressure sensor into an integrated unit. That integration allows highly accurate acoustic-aided positioning by integrating sensor data from the Doppler Velocity Log and/or other acoustic positioning inputs, the company said a news release.

The device is fed position data from Guidance Marine’s vessel-mounted CyScan laser instrument, which takes range and bearing measurements from targets mounted on buildings or stationary surface structures in the ocean, to calculate the vessel’s position and maintain positioning between targets.

CyScan already has shown its accuracy in sea trials earlier in the year. The instrument was mounted on Sonardyne’s Echo Explorer survey vessel and was used to calculate the vessel’s position during transit between Sonardyne’s Plymouth Sea Trials and Training Center and the company’s classroom facility in nearby Turnchapel, U.K. The result was a positional deviation of less than 0.5 m (1.6 ft) over a 1-km (0.6-mile) transit when compared with local, shore-based RTK Global Positioning System data.

Trials are scheduled for later this year and will incorporate water track velocity data using Sonardyne instruments. Guidance Marine also will deploy its recently launched SceneScan product, which maps surface features of structures, such as offshore oil platforms, processes the point cloud data and applies simultaneous localization and mapping techniques to provide relative position data.

Forssea Robotics Receives Funds For Subsea Vehicle Qualifications

A swift cash infusion of $2.8 million will allow Paris-based Forssea Robotics to conduct sea trials for its Atoll vehicle in summer 2019, the company said on Sept. 14.

French venture capitalists Irdi-Soridec and a team of international energy investors supplied the funds for the startup, which developed an autonomous ROV that can be deployed from a light vessel. Atoll employs embedded control algorithms that allow it to perform its own approach and docking.

Atoll acts as a homing device that leads a subsea cable to infrastructure on the seabed at depths of up to 2,000 m (6,562 ft). The system reduces operating costs in certain subsea interventions, because it can be deployed from a very light vessel.

The funding enables Forssea Robotics to qualify the proprietary-designed vehicle and underwater vision systems, Gautier Dreyfus, co-founder and CEO at Forssea, said in a news release. “We will undertake several trial sessions in October 2018 in shallow water, whereas the full-depth equipment will be assembled early 2019 for deepwater trials mid-year. Working offshore is a real challenge, and this successful fundraising is an important milestone underpinning our ambition.”

—Staff Reports