Page 30: of Marine Technology Magazine (November 2019)

2020 & Beyond: Tech Trends

Birdview’s drone concept.

Artist Illustration: Birdview four receivers and a locator on a mobile technology to create small, power-ef- done before,” says Skisland. object, such as a vehicle. It’s been in- ? cient and cost-effective products. We At the Tau event, Water Linked’s po- tegrated with Blue Robotics mini ROVs take a very integrated approach where sitioning system was used as an “under- since 2017. even the tiniest components are dis- water GPS” on Oceaneering’s Freedom

It’s small because Water Linked’s fo- cussed in detail before it is allowed onto 60% scale Freedom AUV test vehicle. cus has been on the computing that can our boards.” There, with four what the company calls number crunch lower power (i.e. small- Power is a trade-off. Water Linked’s receivers on the docking station and er) sensors to come up with the same positioning system works out to 100m, a “locator” on the vehicle, it provided results are bigger (i.e. more costly) sen- with an extension to 200m coming in 1cm-accuracy for the AUV to dock into sors. The company has also designed its 2020. Its modems work out to 1km, a subsea docking station. An optimal own transducers and, to remain lean, it says Skisland. Further would mean scenario would see the vehicle and the outsources manufacturing within Nor- more power, which would mean bigger docking station each with four receivers way. vehicles. But, this is the optimum for and a locator. “Then, the docking sta- “We are doing number crunching to the market the ? rm is targeting – mini tion would know about all nearby AUVs increase the chance of out-putting a ROVs. More and more people are us- and all AUVs would know where to ? nd correct position,” says Oliver Skisland, ing mini ROVs because they’ve become all docking stations. The docking sta-

CEO at Water Linked. “It’s not taking cheap enough. With sensors on them, tion could easily implement a kind of the ? rst and easiest answer as the truth, they can do more with them such as ad- ‘landing system’ as you ? nd in airports it’s doing a lot of computing to increase vanced navigation and providing docu- where it could tell which AUV was in the possibility of giving a correct posi- mentation (position data) for survey or que to dock and which AUVs had to tion.” Water Linked is doing this using inspection work or accurately position wait,” says Skisland. With Water Linked high-performance ? eld programmable divers, says Skisland. So, just like No- modems, images could be transferred at gate arrays (FPGAs). “FPGAs are a fan- tiloPlus, Water Linked says it can offer 10m range to give vehicle pilots a view tastic tool because you can programme a whole system for the same price as of what’s going on, he says. them to be optimised for a speci? c task, a single sensor. “We’re opening a new Next on the company’s hit list is a su- compared with a generic PC,” explains market, giving mini-ROVs new tool to per small Doppler velocity log (DVL)

Skisland. “We’re using ultra-modern do advanced navigation that’s not been to help small ROVs or AUVs hold posi-

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