ESBJERG, Denmark -- Flying 56 miles west from this port, you are greeted by a 10-story, yellow, boxlike platform rising out of the North Sea. It is called SylWin1, the connection to Europe's electric grid from one of the largest power plants ever built offshore. Beyond it, arrayed over 27 acres of ocean, are the 80 Siemens 3.6-megawatt turbines of the Dan Tysk wind farm. For Europeans, and perhaps for some Americans, this may be their energy future. The unobstructed winds at sea here are capable of spinning up enough power to electrify around 1 million German households.

The province’s purchase of the former Canadian Coast Guard base on prime Dartmouth waterfrontage for an ocean technology research and innovation centre is a smart investment in Nova Scotia’s future. The ocean technology sector, which includes shipbuilding and repair, offshore oil and gas, defence industries and other government applications and aquaculture and the fishery, already generates about $500 million in annual revenues, much of that from exports.

Chief executives, business planning and marketing VPs and other interested parties such as investors need to grasp what is one market - autonomous vehicles of every type - and how they have so many components and systems in common. They wish to benchmark best practice and identify trends and this report is the first to pull it all together. Uniquely, it covers the whole topic of autonomous vehicles on-road, off-road, on water, underwater and in the air, whether carrying passengers or not.

 

 

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Plane crashes and other catastrophes more often than not require extensive search and recovery. From a military standpoint that mission is a specialized one that requires a very special group of divers. The Flyaway Saturation Dive System at the Naval Surface Warfare Center is one of a kind. The complex system is rarely duplicated and takes days to put together. "Typically these types of systems are used out in the Gulf or the North Sea for oil field support," said Paul McMurtrie, the Saturation Diving System Program Manager. "This is one of the few systems of its type that’s used specifically for deep ocean salvage."

India has started undersea exploration of an unexplored region in northern Antarctica by a polar remotely operated vehicle (PROVe) developed by Chennai-based National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT). The vehicle underwent a two-month trial in Priyadarshini, a freshwater lake in the Schirmacher oasis (an ice-free plateau) which is a source of water for Maitri, India's second permanent base in the continent.

Dropping a robotic lander on to the surface of a comet was arguably one of the most audacious space achievements of recent times. But one concept mission being studied by the US space agency could top even that. Scientists are proposing to send a robot submarine to the oily seas of Saturn's moon Titan. The seas are filled not with water, but with hydrocarbons like methane and ethane.

Exploring the deep sea, and especially submarine canyons, is a risky business. The floors of many submarine canyons are periodically scoured by fast-moving underwater avalanches known as "turbidity currents." In 2013, one of MBARI's remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) was literally swept away by a turbidity current. Fortunately, the vehicle survived, giving researchers their first close-up view of one of these enigmatic events. The resulting video and data suggest that conceptual models and even textbook descriptions of turbidity currents may need to be revised.

A new resistivity sensor system can give oil and gas companies a better view of subsurface data and the movement of fluids within a reservoir. By gathering data between and far beyond wellbores at reservoir depths at the surface – with or without deploying instrumentation downhole – the San Diego-based GroundMetrics’ technology can improve subsurface visibility, and allow oil and gas companies to optimize drill locations and boost the rate of drilling success.

Rolls-Royce has been awarded a contract by shipbuilder Fincantieri to supply a fully integrated propulsion system for Norway’s new Polar Research Vessel, which will carry out significant environmental research at the North and South Poles. The Rolls-Royce system includes gen sets with a power electric system, a range of thrusters and automation and control systems.

Rotterdam-based law firm AKD says the lack of an unambiguous term to describe a ‘ship’ in several jurisdictions represents a potential threat to asset security for financiers, particularly in the offshore and renewable energy sectors. AKD partner Haco van der Houven van Oordt says, "In many jurisdictions, including the US and the UK, there appears to be no clear definition of a ship. A recent Tulane Maritime Law Journal study illustrated how a variety of floating objects which have no means of propulsion and/or ability to carry cargo or passengers cannot easily be registered as a ship. FPSOs and MODUs, but also FTUs for offshore wind farms, fall into this category."