Page 35: of Marine Technology Magazine (June 2020)

“We’re now in a period where there’s a rapid advance in autonomous systems, underwater vehicles, where technology is improving and is more easily available to people around the world.”

Dave Gentle

VP, ION Geophysical

Photo: ION

To that end, focus on naval security has toNaut USV would provide environ- feeds to improve operational effciency. increased. mental monitoring and be hooked in to ION has been using Marlin and other

Marlin, ION’s marine operations man- command and control software plat- agement platform. forms for more than three decades in the

ShiftinG focuS “However, as we progressed through offshore oil and gas industry. There, it’s

Similarly, ION has been shifting its fo- cus. While the company’s core business the planning stages the CNMOC group mostly used in managing seismic survey is seismic operations, it’s recently been teamed us up with Atlas Elektronik, operations, involving towed streamer looking at how its capabilities could be who provided the Cerberus Diver De- surveys comprising up to 14 hydro- relevant to other markets. The idea that tection Sonar, and Marine Arresting phone arrays each reaching up to 10km it could support naval assets came up Technologies, who have a non-lethal long or seabed surveys with multiple counter measure device in the form of surface vessels and assets deployed on within the last couple of years and re- sulted in ION getting involved in ANTX. their Stingray capture net,” said Gentle. the seafoor.

The event is run every year by the Naval “This then became an exercise in inte- “In later years, we found that, as these

Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) out grating all of the separate systems into a surveys were increasingly needed around of Newport, Rhode Island, and CNMOC port security solution.” and in the middle of busy offshore oil- felds, the seismic survey operations were (Naval Meteorology and Oceanography in confict with other oilfeld operations,” operationS ManaGeMent

Command), based at Stennis, MS. said Gentle. “At this point we turned our

For ANTX 2019, ION proposed a joint Marlin is a rule-based software solution exercise with AutoNaut, a UK based for operations management. It combines attention to simultaneous operations man- agement (simops) enabling the seismic wave propelled unmanned surface ves- temporal planning with spatial aware- sel (USV) developer, part of the Seiche ness, primarily using real-time ships’ surveys and the oilfeld operations to run group of companies, to address the AIS (automatic identifcation system), in harmony with each other and avoiding as well as radar and other tracked target costly downtime.” Marlin could marry the

ANTX Marine Security theme. An Au- www.marinetechnologynews.com

Marine Technology Reporter 35