Page 71 - The ROV Manual - A User Guide for Remotely Operated Vehicles 2nd edition

the number of vehicles grew to 500 by the end of 1982. And the funding line also changed during this period. From 1953 to 1974, 85% of the vehicles built were government funded. From 1974 to 1982, 96% of the 350 vehicles produced were funded, constructed, and/or bought by private industry.
The technological advancements necessary to take ROVs from adolescence to maturity had begun. This was especially true in the electronics industry, with the miniaturization of the onboard systems and their increased reliability. With the ROV beginning to be accepted by the offshore industry, other developers and vehicles began to emerge:
• USA—Hydro Products—the RCV 125, TORTUGA, ANTHRO, and AMUVS were soon followed by the RCV 225, and eventually the RCV 150; AMETEK, Straza Division, San Diego—turned their Navy-funded Deep Drone into their SCORPIO line; Perry Offshore, Florida—started their RECON line of vehicles based on the US Navy’s NAVFAC SNOOPY design.
• Canada—International Submarine Engineering (ISE) started in Canada (DART, TREC, and TROV).
• France—Comex Industries added the TOM-300, C. G. Doris produced the OBSERVER and DL-1.
• Italy—Gay Underwater Instruments unveiled their spherical FILIPPO.
• The Netherlands—Skadoc Submersible Systems’ SMIT SUB and SOP.
• Norway—Myers Verksted’s SPIDER.
• Sweden added SUTEC’s SEA OWL and Saab-Scandia’s SAAB-SUB.
• UK—Design Diving Systems’ SEA-VEYOR, Sub Sea Offshore’s MMIM, Underwater
Maintenance Co.’s SCAN, Underwater and Marine Equipment Ltd.’s SEA SPY, AMPHORA, and SEA PUP, Sub Sea Surveys Ltd.’s IZE, and Winn Technology Ltd.’s UFO-300, BOCTOPUS, SMARTIE, and CETUS.
• Japan—Mitsui Ocean Development and Engineering Co., Ltd., had the MURS-100, MURS-300, and ROV.
• Germany—Preussag Meerestechnik’s FUGE, and VFW-Fokker GmbH’s PINGUIN B3 and B6.
• Other US—Kraft Tank Co. (EV-1), Rebikoff Underwater Products (SEA INSPECTOR), Remote
Ocean Systems (TELESUB-1000), Exxon Production Research Co. (TMV), and Harbor Branch Foundation (CORD).
From 1982 to 1989 the ROV industry grew rapidly. The first ROV conference, ROV’83, was held with the theme “A Technology Whose Time Has Come!” Things had moved rapidly from 1970, when there was only one commercial ROV manufacturer. By 1984 there were 27. North American firms (Hydro Products, AMETEK, and Perry Offshore) accounted for 229 of the 340 industrial vehicles produced since 1975.
Not to be outdone, Canadian entrepreneur Jim McFarlane bought into the business with a series of low-cost vehicles—DART, TREC, and TROV—developed by ISE in Vancouver, British Columbia. But the market was cutthroat; the dollar to pound exchange rate caused the ROV technology base to transfer to the United Kingdom in support of the oil and gas operations in the North Sea. Once the dollar/pound exchange rate reached parity, it was cheaper to manufacture vehicles in the United Kingdom. Slingsby Engineering, Sub Sea Offshore, and the OSEL Group cornered the North Sea market, and the once dominant North American ROV industry was soon decimated. The only North American survivors were ISE (due to their diverse line of systems and the can-do attitude of their owner) and Perry, which wisely teamed with their European competitors to get a foothold in the North Sea.
However, as the oil patch companies were fighting for their share of the market, a few compa- nies took the advancements in technology and used them to shrink the ROV to a new class of
3.1 A bit of history 59