Page 112 - The ROV Manual - A User Guide for Remotely Operated Vehicles 2nd edition

100 CHAPTER 4 Vehicle Control and Simulation
be able to emulate man (or woman) toward a fully compliant robotic system. As inventor, author, and futurist Ray Kurzweil puts it, “The Singularity Is Near.”
4.2 Simulation
Initially conceived purely as a pilot training tool, ROV simulator system technology has advanced and permeated offshore operations. These integrated software systems are used to great effect by militaries, ROV manufacturers, operators, and oil companies for the as-built field visualization, mission planning, dive plan development/evaluation as well as subsea equipment design and testing for ROV missions prior to field deployment. This includes ROV accessibility, engineering design and analysis, hazard identification, and clash detection. It also assists in producing interactive pro- cedure visualizations (to complement the dive plan) and 2D field layout documentation. When field and equipment design is completed (and verified), the simulator comes full circle to be employed in equipment-specific along with mission- and/or site-specific ROV pilot training.
The initial ambition of ROV simulation is to enhance pilot training by system and procedural familiarization. The trainee gains skills for “knobology” (the location and purposes of the pilot interface or console controls) and in developing a sense of 3D awareness. Tether management skills, as the ROV is piloted through a virtual environment, help the student pilot learn in a con- trolled, structured, and low-stress environment.
Simulators were designed to efficiently assist in the creation of ROV pilot capability and confi- dence toward expediting the pilot’s progress from trainee (company financial burden) to field tech- nician (revenue producing). This is done by providing stick-time or hands-on experience without tying up expensive field equipment, creating (expensive) wear and tear, and/or risking ROV sys- tems that could otherwise be employed on jobs offshore.
Starting as early as 1990, substantial development efforts in the area of ROV simulation (most notably by Imetrix) utilized first-generation graphical work stations (such as those produced by Silicon Graphics) to support the processing required for the complex hydrodynamic and collision response solutions of an ROV and its tether.
A turning point came in 1999 with the release of VROV 1: Pilot Training, which featured a new approach of networked PCs featuring distributed processing of simulated camera graphics, sonar data, controls interface, and a dynamics module (DM) that included hydrodynamic modeling. This package provided for multiple modeled parameters including sea state, vehicle/tether drag, and buoyancy, along with hydrodynamic friction/drag of an ROV umbilical/TMS combination (with a 100-m interactive tether). Two years later, VROV 2: Mission Planning and Rehearsal added to the system’s capability with multiple dynamic objects (including two ROV systems) and fully interac- tive manipulators. This fully integrated model has defined the role of ROV simulation since that time.
Uses and capabilities of ROV simulation have been in a constant feedback loop wherein higher resolution and stabler dynamics capabilities have been required, and in turn enabled, more compli- cated and higher-level interactive applications in systems design and analysis.
Simulation is now a common element of the design and testing of the hardware, operations, and procedures related to complex interactive subsea structures, tooling, vehicles, and control software.