Page 11: of Offshore Engineer Magazine (Mar/Apr 2023)

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One of the remaining challenges to overcome if the robotics platform providing data processing, navigation, crew is no longer on the vessel is tether management. Safe autonomy and vehicle control; Safe C2 communications

C2 provides active and autonomous tether management package and additional space for any third party artifcial which includes tether modeling in the water column that intelligence and machine learning libraries. Armed with AI predicts the optimal length required. software such as automatic target recognition, the ROV processes its own data, sending alerts when it recognizes objects of interest and sending data only when needed to

Remove the tether

With Safe C2, the crew is removed from the surface ves- an operator on-the-loop, who can intervene or instruct sel but there is still a physical tethered connection between only when needed.

the subsea ROV and the surface vessel. But what if you Once the ROV can pick up some of the processing pow- could remove the tether completely? This is where OPEN- er, operators change from pilots commanding every move,

SEA Edge comes into play (along with acoustic modems to supervisors observing, ready to pass on instructions as and batteries). Acoustic modems are, for the most part, needed. Armed with batteries and the ability to recharge a low bandwidth and high latency means of communica- subsea, the ROV can now become a resident ROV and the tion. Small pieces of data take a long time to travel. One ROV supervisor can manage not just one ROV but entire way to avoid the small/slow data lane is to not send any feets of ROVs. data at all and let the ROV do the processing. OPENSEA Safe C2 and OPENSEA Edge have been successfully

Edge does exactly that – putting the processing power on demonstrated at sea using both tethered and untethered the ROV so less data is sent by the acoustic modem. ROVs. During Offshore Technology Conference, Hous-

OPENSEA Edge is a hardware and software stack resid- ton, TX in May, Greensea will be demonstrating the Safe ing on any ROV. OPENSEA Edge includes the OPENSEA C2 technology.

MARCH/APRIL 2023 OFFSHORE ENGINEER 11