Real-time Telemetry/Positional Filtering

Scope:

Shallow water presents a uniquely challenging environment for trenching vehicles and positioning is critical in the safe execution of trenching projects.  During a recent cable trenching campaign, the Sulmara Subsea software development team built a suite of tools specifically aimed at improving the efficiency and delivery of trenching data by using augmented positioning in the challenging shallow water environment.

Solution:

By exploiting the dynamics of a tracked vehicle and incorporating telemetry into a specially-designed positioning program, a trencher position can be determined even during the periods without an acoustic position update.  This was the perfect solution when operating in the very short current windows.

Result:

The system has improved the safety case for shallow water trenching operations using larger assets closer to the shore, maximising the operational windows per day and enabled the client to work closer to the beach and reduce the overall trenching duration. The Helix trenching team were continually complimentary at how stable positioning was throughout the project compared to incumbent methods.