4c Engineering reposted this
Last week I posted some thoughts on the Offshore Wind Scotland DeepWind cluster event on steel floating substructures. There was no rest the following day as a second DeepWind event was taking place at The National Robotarium at the Heriot-Watt University campus - this time the Survey & Inspection subgroup were hosting an Automation & Robotics workshop in what was an ideally suited venue. [TL;DR] - the improving sensor & platform capability is impressive - big challenges to ensure accuracy & quality remains as we efficiently process ever growing volumes of data. Increasing use of AI will feature - but how to ensure the training set is good enough? The event was opened by Mike Ellis of Sonardyne International Ltd before Naomi Battison who welcomed us to the National Robotarium and Andrew Pratt of North of Scotland KTP Centre spoke about what was on offer to companies from KTP. The opening presentation was by Joe Tidball of Beam - formerly Rovco/Vaarst who updated us on the change of branding and the latest news on their fleet of vessels and robots. Of note was their new Xplorer 18 ASV, a hybrid for autonomous operation with the option to be fully crewed. René Rasmussen of MacArtney Underwater Technology Group took us through the Focus 3 ROTV and the eBOSS system. Chris Almond of Kraken Robotics gave examples of their survey offering, focussing mainly on their acoustic coring technology - definitely a presentation that works best with videos! In the afternoon, we heard from Aspect Land & Hydrographic Surveys Ltd, GEOxyz, BeeX who all spoke about the capabilities of their ROVs/fleet. They were followed by John Houlder of Sonardyne International Ltd who spoke about the importance of accuracy in a true north seeking capability and the importance of post processing your data to ensure maximum accuracy. The final presentation came from Melissa Sandison, PhD who spoke about the support and resources available at Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult DARE facility. It was nice to see the SEAJET kit we'd worked on the analysis of appearing in the video she shared. They're planning a demonstration event in November with live demos featuring several of the companies who presented at this workshop. My final thoughts: the improving quality of data available from sensors and platforms is impressive, it highlights the need for - and value - that can be be driven from smart, optimised post-processing analysis techniques. AI techniques are certainly a compelling option, however, many speakers noted that building a high quality set of training data is not straightforward (or cheap) for these challenging subsea conditions. Automation will certainly be important in the future, allowing companies to do more with the same headcount - the challenge will be ensuring quality and accuracy doesn't drop. Thanks as always to Paul O'Brien for his compering of the event and to the caterers for the most impressive pastry selection I've ever seen at a business event!