November 16, 2017

Abyssal OS helps fuel your gas tank from beneath the waves

Enterprise

Simulation

Visualization

Spotlight

By Keef Sloan

Gassing up our vehicles is a common routine we take for granted, but how many motorists stop to consider how the fuel they consume ends up at the pumps? For a small company in Portugal, however, that question is at the forefront of their minds on a day-to-day basis. It’s a long trek from the darkest depths of the ocean floor to your gas tank, and Abyssal ensures the journey is as smooth as possible.

A successful startup in the oil and gas industry, Abyssal are the creators and suppliers of a real-time oil field monitoring solution that allows global offshore oil services to manage their fleet from anywhere on the planet. Working closely with Oceaneering, one of the largest fleet operators of work class ROVs in the world, Abyssal have been delivering a live monitoring system to multiple oil fields since 2011.

“Essentially, we took Unreal Engine as a 3D, real-time visualization tool and coupled that with a geographical information system,” explained Manuel Parente, Abyssal Chief Technology Officer.

“That means that during a live operation we can track vessels, submarines, ROVs. We can basically track anything that has a beacon on it.”

Beyond the ability to track the position of vehicles within an oil field down to millimeter precision, the Abyssal Offshore also lets operators utilize an augmented reality overlay to overcome one of the biggest challenges of working at such depths: visibility.

As Mark Stevens, Director of Global Data Solutions at Oceaneering, explains “When we descend to the bottom of the ocean, sometimes up to 10km straight down, ROVs will stir up a lot of sediment and current. And because we use a visual camera systems to see things, this then blocks our view. With the overlay in place we can continue the operations, we can deploy the tool and that reduces overall downtime for the client which saves money for the operation.”

Discover the other ways Abyssal Offshore helps fuel our modern life by watching the video above.