Teledyne Gavia has announced the recent sale and delivery of two additional Gavia offshore surveyor AUVs to NCS Survey of Aberdeen, Scotland. The new Gavia vehicles will augment the existing NCS Survey fleet of Gavia AUVs to meet increased operational demand. Both vehicles are equipped with a full survey suite that includes side scan sonar, sub-bottom profiler, swath bathymetry and camera, and are coupled with a high accuracy DVL aided inertial navigation system. The Gavia vehicles are also equipped with the Teledyne Benthos directional acoustic transponder (DAT) USBL system, which greatly improves the performance of the Gavia vehicles in deeper waters.
"We have been operating Gavia offshore surveyors very successfully since 2009 and the need to keep expanding our fleet is driven by increasing client demand around the world. The extremely high resolution survey data that NCS Survey is able to collect, using the Gavia AUVs, quickly and at a reasonable cost to the client, was a key driver in our decision to buy more. With the addition of these two vehicles, we now have the largest commercial fleet of portable AUVs in the world," stated Andy Gray, president NCS Survey – an Acteon Group company.
The Gavia offshore surveyor is a fully modular autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV). The Gavia AUVs have field swappable modules, a 1,000m depth rating, a wide range of sensor options including a full survey suite, a range of navigation and positioning choices, and a low logistics design that allows them to be operated from vessels of opportunity. The Gavia AUV produces superior data quality surveys at a fraction of the cost when compared with traditional use of costly surface vessels or ROVs.
"Teledyne Gavia is extremely pleased to deliver these additional vehicles to NCS Survey. NCS Survey was the launch customer for the Gavia offshore surveyor vehicles and is a pioneer in the use of low logistics AUVs for commercial survey applications," said Arnar Steingrimsson, director of sales – vehicles, for Teledyne Gavia and Teledyne Webb Research. "We are excited to build upon this relationship and to further expand the use of Gavia vehicles in the commercial survey market."