Page 29: of Marine Technology Magazine (November 2019)

During a drone demonstration event in Tau, near Stavanger, Norway, Bird View demonstrated its ideas. about a year, says Malik, mostly fo- drone so ? sherman know faster where have the bandwidth to receive new mis- cused towards the ? shing sector. This ? sh are. sions, without direct control. has involved using a DJ1 6-blade drone But, Birdview see other opportunities, The ? rm aims to start testing its home- that it’s been launched from the IMR’s including dipping a modem to gather grown drone in about a year and take ? shing vessels offshore, learning and data from underwater sensors or even it to market in about 18 months to two honing take-off and landing. Here, it’s to provide a communications link to re- years. Birdview is also working with been using a Simrad echo sounder, mote control ROVs or mobile underwa- TechnipFMC. that’s dropped into the water on a small ter platforms, so they don’t have to stay winch from the drone, to ? nd ? sh. The within range of a communications hub. Water Linked echo sounder gathers data that’s then It’s now working on a system with a These systems need sensors and new processed to show where ? sh are. And 50km single range with semi and fully kid on the block is offering some of the results have been good, says Malik, automated missions. A challenge is data those. Over the past seven years, Water avoiding issues ? shing vessels can have transfer – when away from the host ves- Linked, based in Trondheim, Norway, with vessel noise in the water because sel or communications networks, less has developed ultra-small subsea posi- it’s able to dip the sonar further away data can be sent, so the drone’s com- tioning and underwater modems. The from the vessel. The next step is edge munications systems have to be able to subsea positioning system is based on analytics – i.e. data processing on the reduce the amount of telemetry, but still an inverted short baseline system, using www.marinetechnologynews.com

Marine Technology Reporter 29

MTR #9 (18-33).indd 29 12/2/2019 11:57:52 AM