The Underwater Inspection System (UIS™) from CodaOctopus has been the subject of evaluation by the United States Coast Guard Research and Development Center (USCG) for some time.
Assessment with U.S. Coast Guard R&D
The USCG has a number of UIS™ systems and has worked with CodaOctopus in developing the functionality further.
The report which provides an update on their evaluation to date states, in part, that these systems have been deployed in various and varied operations such as the recent helicopter crash near the Alabama shore where the UIS™ was deployed to aid in the search and recovery of “four bodies” to an operation for recovering 7½ tons of cocaine from a sunken semisubmersible.
Jack McCready, branch chief for the Coast Guard Research and Development Center ’s Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) branch described a typical operation: “It [the UIS] was utilized during the recovery of 7½ tons of cocaine from a sunken self-propelled semisubmersible last summer,” A number of the possible locations of the vessel were identified by the Coast Guard cutter Oak, and he went on to say “As the cutter moved to each of these locations, the UIS was then able to conduct precise imaging.” When the system found the sunken vessel, it was able to direct a team of FBI divers exactly to the target. It was reported that the Coast Guard detained the crew and recovered some of the cargo before the boat sank. The cocaine was recovered from the sunken vessel in what Coast Guard officials described as a first-of-its-kind operation.
In the article, McCready states that the Coast Guard evaluated and compared other types of underwater imagers—lasers and cameras with lighting systems—but the UIS™ came out on top. “We evaluate across the spectrum to identify the best method of being able to interrogate and to create an image, so we have looked at multiple technologies,” McCready explains.
[mappress] Subsea World News Staff , July 04, 2012; Image: CodaOctopus