SBIR-STTR Award

Triton Technology (TTI) proposes to develop an integrated Ocean Instrument Management system. This is a network-based, open architecture system that, based on the user input, manages a diverse set of oceanographic sensors and collectively optimizes their activity in realtime. The system will integrate a real-time operating system running on an optimized industry standard computer workstation. A sensor management software program will be developed to-coordinate the-activity of the sensors to optimize the data of the greatest interest. The main goal of the proposed phase 1 will be to demonstrate and verify the ability of such a system to integrate, test, and manage a minimum of 3 sensor engines running under the control of the survey executive. Development of a sensor engine template, design of a survey executive, and the fabrication of a test bed system is required to reach the goals of the proposal.

TTI proposes to further develop the integrated Ocean Instrument Management System and subsequently demonstrate its functionality with a field survey. Triton will commercialize and promote the developed open architecture as a new sensor management standard for the offshore industry. Work conducted under Phase I has identified a suitable system architecture by visualizing three sensors. During Phase II Triton proposes to replace two of the simulated virtuql sensors, namely a fathometer and side scan sonar, with actual survey sensors. The third sensor, a GPS positioning system, has already been completed under Phase I and will form part of the demonstration sensor suite. By enhancing the prototype system Scheduler ( Survey Executive) and integrating the virtualized sensors, Triton proposes to develop and conduct a field trial to demonstrate the remote control of the network distributed sensor array. Triton proposes to demonstrate the technology to various industry representatives to which standard shall be targeted at this time.

Benefits:
A major benefit that will be achieved by sucha project would be to create a commercial standard interface procedure incorporating sensor standards, such as the National Marine Electronics Association (NMEA) standard. The potential commercial applications of such a development are far-reaching including:Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD), Hydrographic, Geophysical, Geotechnica;l and Oceanaographic Survey Operations.

Keywords:
Hydrographic Data Collection Survey Executive Sensor Engine Geophysical Survey Oceanographic Sidescan Sonar