Page 101 - The ROV Manual - A User Guide for Remotely Operated Vehicles 2nd edition

3.6 Standards and specifications 89
3.6 Standards and specifications
“And God said, Let there be light: and there was light” (Book of Genesis). “And light became a standard” (Book of Bob). Once light was chosen as a standard, sensors (e.g., eyes) could be designed to a common protocol (e.g., polarity, focus, orientation) and tuned to a common wave- length spectrum (for humans, 380
740 nm). Other beings could similarly make use of the electro- magnetic spectrum wavelengths for other sensors (IR/UV) as well as other electromagnetic measures for use in their survival. The ones that effectively made use of the proper wavelengths and protocols survived and thrived while the beings using the wrong parameters either died or were consumed by the entities more suited for survival. It is the exact same measure for a standard—and evolution of standards lives on (nods to Mr. Charles Darwin . . .).
Standards are necessary in practically all cooperative fields so that everyone knows the rules and can project the future for investment of time and resources with the knowledge that the other participants in the field will play along. The industry players cooperate in an additive fashion so as to achieve synergy in the development of any technology or endeavor. Standards are imperative— imagine a design team for an aircraft where one half of the engineers used the metric system and the other imperial units. “Let’s play football!” One team arrives with a soccer ball, the second for a rugby game, while the third shows up in helmet and pads (US gridiron style).
The word “standard” is described in the Oxford dictionary as, “used or accepted as normal or average; (of a size, measure, design, etc.) such as is regularly used or produced (not special or exceptional); (of a work, repertoire, or writer) viewed as authoritative or of permanent value and so widely read or performed.” Further, a per se standard is only as good as the standards organization holding it. A standard held by a small local club or company is unlikely to gain wide regional acceptance while some governmental standards (e.g., military specifications or “MILSPEC”) are unlikely to be adapted by civilian organizations (although some MILSPEC standards are widely used in civilian applications).
In the subsea industry, there are few organizations that are large enough to drive a standard. On the military side, those services that concentrate in the subsea world typically do not share their secrets (thus killing any would-be standards). On the civilian side, the largest application is with minerals extraction—currently dominated by oil and gas exploration and production. The two oil and gas industry-specific organizations promulgating standards are the American Petroleum Industry (API) and the International Standards Organization (ISO).
There is an interesting anecdote on standards evolution. In 2005, the Program Executive Officer of Littoral and Mine Warfare of the US Navy had a problem. He was tasked with bringing about the development of the Littoral Combat Ship’s new integrated robotic fighting platform, but there were few established standards with which all of the disparate systems could communicate (one specifi- cally was the Mission Reconfigurable Unmanned Undersea Vehicle, or “MRUUV”). He was faced with an extremely tight development timeline and realized how slowly the military develops stan- dards. So he did a nontraditional move—he threw the standard to the civilian side to develop. He lost the benefit of control but gained the benefit of rapidity and reduced cost. As a very credible sponsor- ing agency, the US Navy chose the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) to hold the standard for the MRUUV (ASTM Committee F41—later expanded its coverage from its roots of the UUV to Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV)). The Navy expected other manufacturers to build to