Mooring chain inspections are costly, tedious, operationally challenging and often result in inconclusive findings with current inspection methods. Here divers or ROVs are deployed subsea and equipped with callipers they take high precision measurements. The error tolerance on these measurements is sub-mm when reviewing the integrity of a mooring chain link, however, the inspection technologies are error-prone and struggle to reliably achieve this precision. Furthermore, the inspection is time-consuming, increasing ship time, which can cost $100,000s per day.

An Oil and Gas super major engaged with Abyss to test its proprietary camera system, Lantern Eye S to provide high precision, low-cost mooring chain inspection. Packed into a small carry on a briefcase, an Abyss imaging specialist went offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, to work alongside an ROV team to integrate the Lantern Eye S onto a work class ROV, and then conduct a mooring chain inspection.

The high precision inspection camera, with the smallest form factor in its class, was easily integrated with a matter of hours  (as opposed to other technologies takes days. The subsea inspection for the links was conducted in a matter of minutes rather than hours, as the ROV hovered near a chain link while the Lantern Eye snapped away.

Within a matter of minutes, a rich digital twin 3d reconstruction of the links were produced, and overnight the data was further processed to return high precision, sub-mm precision. Such processes otherwise can take weeks or months otherwise.

Following the pilot, the technology has demonstrated repeated success in high precision metrology for various clients. Abyss is certified as a “Recognized External Specialist: Offshore Facility Inspection/Monitoring Firm” Certificate Number 20-4251914-A. Download