Distributed Technology News

Just over the horizon, a new ‘Integration Strategy’ promises offshore safety and efficiencies. Kongsberg’s Walk-to-Work technology is just the beginning. Maritime technology has come on in leaps and bounds since the turn of the century. We have the technology to keep an offshore support vessel on station within a 0.5-meter radius, even in the most severe weather conditions and sea states. We have the technology to manage power output, and control drives and thrusters to the ‘nth’ degree, providing safety and reliability for all ship handling operations. And we have the technology to deliver gigabytes of data to shore without paying for a helicopter or a mid-ocean drop off of hard drives or DVDs. So, what’s next? Arguably, the ‘big’ topic is unmanned vessels.

Bluefin Robotics has successfully completed deep-water testing of a specialized Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (UUV) for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The system was developed under a Phase II subcontract from Applied Physical Sciences Corp. (APS) for the Deep Sea Operations (DSOP) Program. DSOP is part of DARPA's Distributed Agile Submarine Hunting program (DASH), which aims to develop affordable distributed technology to address Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) surveillance needs over large, operationally relevant areas.