In 1989, BTW Associates of New Zealand was contracted by a client to provide positioning services for an offshore pipeline-inspection survey. The result was NGL, a QNX-based application dedicated to collecting, processing, displaying, and recording navigation data. While used mainly for offshore surveys, NGL can also be found on research vessels, where it provides positioning for other data acquisition systems, such as oceanographic and meteorological systems. One notable NGL installation is on board the Nathaniel B. Palmer, an Antarctic research vessel. ROVs are controlled from a separate PC on board the ship.
Collected data can be output to a vessel DP system, a CELS database, or printers and plotters.
Data can also be overlaid to a video recorder or sent via modem to shore base. Navigation today Ten years ago, most of our clients required their survey computer to produce a position every six seconds. Nowadays, most requirements call for a position every second. And because quality control has become the name of the game, sensors are often doubled up, meaning a lot more data to record and process. In fact, several of our clients record all data, which can mean recording up to 3K of data per second.