Kongsberg Installs Acoustic Positioning Station for Surveyors on Offshore Vessel
Kongsberg Maritime Ltd, UK, has completed the APOS Survey installation on Bibby Offshore’s long-term charter vessel, the Olympic Bibby. The APOS Survey operator station enables surveyors to leverage the power of Kongsberg Maritime’s High Precision Acoustic Positioning (HiPAP) system to deliver accurate survey results simultaneously, whilst the HiPAP is still utilised as a DP position reference.
The APOS Survey station offers full LBL and SSBL, quicker mobilisation times and is designed for both permanent and temporary installation on vessels, negating the mobilisation cost and time associated with over the side portable transducers.
APOS Survey communicates directly with the HiPAP transceiver, which enables the surveyor to operate independently of the bridge. Acoustic interrogations are interleaved or run simultaneously with the DP system updates, without making changes to the vessel’s APOS software or installation parameters. With APOS Survey, the surveyor can interface local survey-grade sensors, IMU, gyro and GNSS, set up lever arms and load sound velocity profiles independent of the vessel, thus unlocking the full potential of HiPAP for survey operations.
Ed Fennell, sales manager, Subsea of Kongsberg Maritime Ltd’s Aberdeen base, said that the software safely integrates into the vessel’s HiPAP system through a high speed optically-isolated serial connection to maintain independence from the vessel’s Dynamic Positioning (DP) network and allows the bridge crew to maintain full control of what is shared with APOS Survey.
The software in APOS Survey also removes any restrictions normally associated with operating a HiPAP system for survey purposes as it is predominantly used as a (DP) reference system.
Robin Longstaff, survey manager at Bibby Offshore, said that the independence from the vessel’s sensors and settings allows the surveyors to integrate the survey grade sensors to unlock the positioning potential of the vessel’s HiPAP. APOS Survey also allows surveyors to quickly and easily add additional ROV transceivers for increased functionality.
