US company puts untethered ROV operation to test

U.S.-headquartered Greensea Systems has demonstrated untethered autonomous operation of commercially available remotely operated vehicles (ROVs). 

Using a commercially available Defender ROV from VideoRay, outfitted with batteries, an acoustic modem, and the new OPENSEA Edge system, Greensea demonstrated untethered operation of an ROV at sea. 

During the operations, Greensea said it had demonstrated that the VideoRay Defender was able to search, classify, map, and inspect during a mock EOD mission while being untethered.

Operators supervised the autonomous ROV through Greensea’s EOD Workspace user interface for defense applications.

Greensea also used its Safe C2 (standoff command and control) technology to provide seafloor to over-the-horizon communications. This is said to have enabled the supervision of the ROV over very low bandwidth and very high latency-sparse data connections by an operator using a tablet.

“Eliminating the tether, surface ship, and onsite operator from ROV operations presents the opportunity for the industry to realize a new era of working in the ocean,” said Ben Kinnaman, Greensea’s CEO. “In this concept, our reach into the ocean is infinite and presence persistent. This demonstration shows that it is possible, affordable, and enabling.”

Besides VideoRay as the vehicle partner in this test, Greenea partnered with SeeByte for the Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) on OPENSEA Edge and OceanComm for the acoustic modem solution.

Last year, Greensea Systems launched a new company created to develop, manufacture, and distribute a line of amphibious robots acquired from C-2 Innovations.

The company named Bayonet Ocean Vehicles is based in Plymouth, Massachusetts, co-located with Greensea, in a newly renovated 17,000 square feet manufacturing facility.