Rovco Launches World’s First Live 3D Subsea Streaming Technology

In a world-first, Rovco has launched “SubSLAM Live” a 3D Streaming technology which allows clients to video and live stream 3D underwater pointclouds to any device in the world.

The stereo camera technology system sends images and 3D models of assets from the seabed to a computer browser in any location globally. This offers customers instantaneous access to information as an inspection or construction activity is taking place. We trialed the technology earlier in the year with an oil and gas Super Major, at a renewable wind farm, and more recently in 0.5m of visibility at an ex-naval dockyard owned by Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult.

Iain Wallace, Rovco’s CSO said: “To our knowledge, this technology is the first of its kind, anywhere in the world, to live stream from the seabed to a desk. We have been utilizing our SubSLAM technology for one year so far but with our ongoing investment in research and development, our latest capability of the system has revolutionized how subsea work can be carried out.”

During the final trials, the technology was lowered into a sea-water filled dock which contains sample assets from the subsea industry. Our Engineers were using the state-of-the-art stereo camera system to capture high-definition video, this allowed us to use the SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) system to build highly accurate 3D point cloud models while staff back in our office 300 miles away, directed the ROV while keeping track of the ROV location and operations via their phones and laptops.

The capabilities of this new technology will change the way the industry carries out underwater inspections. It can reduce time, cost and revolutionize the way engineers process data, allowing for faster data-driven decisions to be made regarding the integrity of subsea infrastructure.

Iain added: “The model is compressed and progressively sent over a low-bandwidth < 256Kb network link to a cloud server along with the ROV’s position. Authorized clients can then log into our highly secure Data Delivery Platform and view the live model, pulling the data from the cloud on-demand.”

More than 20 engineers in our research and development team have worked on the new technology, Iain Wallace added: “We are now able to deliver higher quality and faster results to our customers with this technology than is possible with any other subsea 3D system. It is also a step towards proving that our online Data Delivery Platform is the perfect tool for hosting, viewing and manipulating all varieties of subsea data.”