Coda Octopus Introduces Automatic Cable Tracking and Prediction of Cable Touchdown Point

Coda Octopus has announced the automation of its solution for real time tracking and monitoring of cable laying operations including the cable touch down point.



Coda Octopus’ sonar series, Echoscope® and Echoscope PIPE®, are used in numerous offshore renewable projects to monitor, in real time 3D, the installation of underwater cables, monitoring and providing the touch-down point for cable laying operations.



Until the introduction of this automated process, the task of identifying and logging the cable touch down point was performed by the Echoscope® operator by manually clicking on the cable touchdown point – both labor intensive and subject to operator’s interpretation.



The new method, which is covered by patent number US11204108 (“A method of predicting and adjusting the laying of cable using sonar imaging), removes the need for the Echoscope® operator to do this manually and brings greater preciseness and efficiency to the cable laying operations when using the Echoscope® technology. Under the new global cable tracking solution, the Echoscope® operator guides the initial cable position by seeding a few points on the cable, after which the automated cable tracking software tracks and records the cable touch down point.  



In addition to displaying the current tracked position and status, the global cable tracking solution provides comprehensive output of real-time data for integration with third party systems such as survey systems and vessel navigation to ensure the entire project has real-time cable monitoring data.  



For cable laying operations which take place in deeper waters, it is often the case that only partial views of the cable can be captured by the Echoscope® sonar. Where the portion of the cable touching the base is not visible thereby preventing the user from obtaining measurement data our new global tracking solution simultaneously analyzes the cable and detected seabed positions and computes the predicted and approximate cable touch down point between the cable and the seabed.