Greensea System Utilized by Vulcan Inc. in USS Indianapolis Discovery

Vulcan Inc., a Paul G. Allen Company, utilized state-of-the-art Greensea technology in their recent historic discovery of the USS Indianapolis at 5500m in the Philippine Sea. Greensea’s proven OPENSEA™ universal marine industry operating platform provided a unified, integrated system and supervised autonomy for the Vulcan ROV during its mission to confirm and document the wreckage of the WWII vessel.

“Greensea’s OPENSEA control system is crucial to our success for extreme deep diving operations. Never before have I experienced an ROV control environment as unified, configurable or integrated as this one,” said Robert Kraft, director of subsea operations for Vulcan. “Greensea has a solid, reliable product, and I consider them a valued asset to all of our subsea systems.”

Greensea technology provided unprecedented control for the ROV and helped create operational efficiencies for the pilots. Cutting-edge features essential to streamlining the mission’s operations included:

• An automated ascent and descent winch control system that allowed the pilots to set a desired vehicle depth and automatically descend or ascend to that level.
• An automated black box that turned on and off when the vehicle entered and exited the water, providing a comprehensive recording of the mission’s telemetry data, for both the AUV and the ROV.
• Synchronized pilot and co-pilot chairs with touchscreen displays that supported simultaneous operation of lights, cameras, and hydraulics, while enabling vehicle control to be switched between pilots.
• A multi-vehicle user interface.