The First Port on the Journey to Automation

Have you ever wondered how to significantly reduce the amount of vessel time required to conduct inspections on seabed assets? How can you both mitigate risk and minimize your carbon footprint when inspecting subsea elements?

Is there a way to do all this while also capturing the sorts of superior image and measurement data that allow you to make informed decisions in the maintenance of your seabed assets?

Cathx Ocean, an Irish company founded in 2009, is a leading global innovator in the subsea imaging and measurement industry and is poised to bring CATHX FDI^® Seabed to market in August 2021, a full service offering that covers a wide range of optical surveys on assets, organic life and area surveys of the seafloor. CATHX FDI^® Seabed can be deployed across a wide range of ROV’s, AUV’s and ROTV’s.

WHAT IS FDI®?

CATHX’s Fast Digital Inspection (FDI) is a complete suite of subsea optical survey solutions enabling superior surveys of underwater assets such as Oil & Gas pipelines, Subsea Cable Routes, Offshore Wind Energy, Marine Environments, Deep Sea Mining, Defense, Law Enforcement and Fisheries industries.

Cathx Ocean has been developing FDI^® technology in the field over the past two years to substantially improve subsea optical imaging for ROV and AUV systems. The proprietary and patented technologies allow imaging of large areas at high speed, radically reducing the vessel time required to perform surveys in a range of applications by over 80%.

REDUCING COSTS, CARBON & RISK

Case studies show that the speed at which CATHX FDI® Seabed systems can conduct optical surveys significantly reduces mission-critical vessel time from 36 days to just 6 days. With the running of ships costing up to €100,000 per day, reduced time at sea with CATHX FDI® Seabed creates substantial cost savings for your business as well as greatly reducing environmental impact. As the time required to conduct subsea surveys is considerably reduced, CATHX FDI® Seabed requires less in-field personnel and so diminishes human risk during deployment.

SUPERB IMAGE & MEASUREMENT QUALITY

The Visual Perception hardware allows for the survey vehicle to capture high quality UHD imagery with accurate measurable laser data at speeds of 5 knots and larger areas than traditional video techniques. CATHX FDI^® Seabed systems capture visual data in a unique way, allowing the survey vehicles to travel faster than previously thought possible with video inspections and improves the quality of the data captured. All of this is achieved with precise time synchronization. The lighting is activated at the exact moment the camera captures an image, and the lasers fire when the lighting is off. The strobe lighting provides a large increase in lumen output in comparison to standard ROV lighting, allowing for shorter exposure times, and therefore less motion blur.

The CATHX FDI® Seabed systems not only deliver Ultra High Definition 2D Imagery, but also 3D Point cloud laser data that can be easily inspected using Integrity Management Software such as Eiva, Navimodel, QPS, Ginsy, and Fugro Starfix.

DESIGNED WITH THE CUSTOMER IN MIND

CATHX FDI^® Seabed hardware technology has been designed to be universally compatible with all ROV's and AUV's on the market. In addition, Cathx is developing automated eventing features designed from the ground up with CATHX FDI^® Seabed data deliverables in mind. Throughout the service, Cathx Ocean’s Support Team is on hand to respond to customers’ ever changing and specific requirements.

The CATHX FDI^® Seabed proposition is available to Cathx Ocean clients in two specific offerings: An end-to end single project offering called CATHX FDI® SEABED SERVICE, or a multi-year license-based offering called CATHX FDI^® SEABED SOLUTION.

The CATHX FDI^® SEABED SERVICE allows the purchase and the configuring of the image and measuring system based on specific survey requirements. From the initial planning session through to the reporting on the Data

Inspection, the Cathx Ocean Operations team is available to support and guide clients to obtain the clearest visualization of their seabed resources.

Cathx Ocean’s aim is to provide clients with real value when employing CATHX FDI^® SEABED SOLUTION. This multi-year licensed solution is offered when buyers are considering servicing multiple clients in a specific region, offering the full benefits of the CATHX FDI® SEABED SOLUTION but over a 1 – 5-year period.

CATHX FDI^® SEABED SOLUTION allows the buyer to diffuse the cost of the service in their OPEX budgeting rather than through CAPEX outlays; by spreading this investment over a predetermined timeframe, Cathx FDI® SEABED SOLUTION offers clients a more flexible and cost-beneficial proposition.

It also allows the buyer to take advantage of the latest perception systems and software releases as they come to market, but clients will additionally be able to compare their asset data year on year, or mission by mission.

Like all businesses, Cathx Ocean had to reevaluate how to deliver hardware and services to customers amid the advent of COVID-19. “When COVID-19 happened, we had to go back to the drawing board as to how we not only sold but delivered our products and services to our clients.” According to Cathx Ocean founder and CEO Adrian Boyle. “Fast Digital Imaging has been developed during field tests and in collaboration with our clients to help them conduct their seabed inspections and asset surveys quicker, safer whilst delivering the best visual data of their assets. This provided them with the strongest and clearest data to help them maintain their assets and assist reducing their expenditure and carbon footprint.”

CATHX FDI^® Seabed is just the first port in our journey and commitment to delivering the ability for asset owners and AUV and UUV operators to avail a fully autonomous and uncrewed visual perception and inspection service. All areas of the CathX Ocean business are working towards developing the next generation of hardware, operational and support services to make capturing ocean data a faster, more cost effective, more carbon conscious and safer proposition.

To find out more information about CATHX FDI^® Seabed, visit cathxocean.com or contact the sales team at sales@cathxocean.com.

This story was originally featured in ON&T August 2021. Click here to read more.