UK: WFS’s Viewtooth Provides New Perspective to Subsea Operations

WFS Technologies launches the second generation of the Viewtooth® subsea wireless video camera.

For deep water applications, the use of a camera for visual inspection and support can remove the need for additional vehicles by providing multiple perspectives, thereby reducing significant cost, risk and time in the water.

Viewtooth® from WFS Technologies is a wireless subsea camera that can support applications across a wide range of industries including: offshore, survey, decommissioning, scientific research, diving and security. The latest generation offers extended communication range, and full ocean depth deployment capability.

Viewtooth® is compact and portable, easily operated, and can be quickly integrated with leading underwater vehicles to be used in applications down to 4000m. By offering an additional perspective on a complex task, Viewtooth reduces the time and increases the reliability of ROV operations.

Viewtooth® supports any application where a clearer or a multi-perspective view, or a second frame of reference can decrease mission length and complexity. These might include applications such as hot stab or intervention operations where “right-first-time” is critical; spill and containment operations as the wireless video signal is not interrupted by the presence of contaminants in the water, cost effective 360° view for subsea construction or landing of manifolds or BOPs, troubleshooting support for remote inspection or monitoring applications and even for ROV safety, preventing or solving entanglement issues with the vehicle umbilical.

Viewtooth® is based on the capabilities of WFS’ seatooth® platform to transmit high bandwidth data through-water. seatooth® communicates reliably in challenging environments where traditional underwater communications methods can suffer poor performance: acoustic noise, contaminants, shallow, congested or turbid waters.

At a recent Viewtooth® launch event at Fort William, Scotland, WFS demonstrated the transmission of streaming full-colour video over distances in excess of 5m through seawater and the relay of those images to the surface via a dedicated Ethernet link attached to the ROV umbilical were shown. The demonstration also showed the transmission of up to 156kbps video stream through water to an ROV.

The demonstration setup included three cameras: one on the ROV transmitting to the operator; the Viewtooth® camera) transmitting to the laptop; and a camcorder outside the tank. Viewtooth® allows the operator to observe events from different vantage points e.g. the ROV operator has the extra advantage of a second frame of reference to help in positioning the ROV.

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Subsea World News Staff , June 14, 2012;  Image: WFS