Page 32: of Marine Technology Magazine (November 2019)

2020 & Beyond: Tech Trends

Photo: Hydromea

Hydromea’s LUMA modem. enough thrusters, batteries for endurance, and small what’s happening subsea. acoustic modems. In addition, they were asked by Ger- A LUMA modem was deployed by Rever Offshore at many’s Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) to expand their a wellhead site as part of an Ashtead Technology Au- work on optical communication and develop a stand- tonomous Monitoring System (AMS+) during a drilling alone unit. Their LUMA 500ER now offers 500kbs project for Total in the North Sea early in 2019. An ROV (thousand bits per second) data rate at up to 70m range could then get data from the AMS+, using LUMA, 8m over a 120 degree cone, says Igor Martin, the ? rm’s from the wellhead.

CEO. But he says they think that can be expanded to Later in 2019, an Alfred Wegener Institute and Max multi megabits per second at greater distances. Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology scienti? c “Now we see that as you miniaturize stuff, it becomes cruise on the research vessel Sonne used LUMA mo- more affordable,” says Martin. “It gives you the ? ex- dems on Geomar’s ROV KIEL6000 to directly commu- ibility to retro? t. It’s portable and scalable. Instead of nicate with subsea instruments, also with LUMA mo- costing tens of thousands, it’s thousands and it opens dems, in 4000m water depth, to ensure that their sensors up different opportunities. With small portable systems were working and recon? gure them if necessary.

from companies like Water Linked and Hydromea, you With the technologies it’s built over the last 10 years, enable an environment where having inexpensive mo- including LUMA, Hydromea is now turning its atten- dems or tools or sensor-systems - allows you to scale tion to building a miniature, tether-less semi-autono- up.” mous underwater drone, called the ExRay. It’s being

The ? rm has been on the Oil & Gas Technology Cen- designed to be able to operate inside con? ned spaces tre’s TechX accelerator program and has seen its opti- ? lled with water, such as ballast water tanks on vessels. cal communication technology used by Rever Offshore, The goal is for it to be able to use simultaneous localiza-

Ocean Installer and i-Tech 7 for tasks like transmitting tion and mapping (SLAM) to navigate tanks and to use roll/pitch/yaw data from gyro boxes to observing ROVs mosaicing software to produce 3D heat maps of areas during subsea construction projects to give on-deck needing maintenance. The ? rst ExRay is due to launch crane operators, for example, faster information about in 2021.

November/December 2019 32 MTR

MTR #9 (18-33).indd 32 12/2/2019 12:04:05 PM