Subsea service provider N-Sea, and Strathclyde University have secured ‘substantial’ funding from the Data Lab Innovation Centre for an innovative research project aimed at automating subsea pipeline inspection.
The collaboration combines N-Sea’s inspection expertise and the expert team at the university’s Institute of Sensors Signals and Communications at the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering.
In the last 10 years, the subsea inspection landscape has come a long way in terms of sensors and high definition cameras – but the annotation process remains a largely manual process.
The approaches and techniques adopted by the university and N-Sea have never before been attempted in the subsea environment and promise to transform the inspection industry.
David Murray, Survey and Inspection Data Centre Manager at N-Sea, explained: “We have seen ROV technology evolve significantly over the years. However, inspection operations still require ROV pilots and inspection engineers who annotate the data acquired.
“By working closely together, we aim to automate the inspection process and operate ROVs at previously impossible speeds.”
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