Uptime International, a leader in active motion compensated offshore gangways, launched the next generation autonomous systems in vessels maintaining offshore wind farms and on flotel vessels (floating hotels) for offshore oil exploration. The CDP based control systems are used for these mission critical systems and systems are design with high safety criteria as operations involve personnel transfer in bad weather.

The Uptime motion compensated control system ensure active motion compensation of the gangway, docking of the gangway, adjustment of the pedestal, software redundancy in case of failures, signal and data logging, remote monitoring and much more. The solution received Statoil TRL7 proven technology award.

Real-time integration and 3D scanning

The autonomous gangway control system is developed using CDP. CDP was selected as the development platform as it is proven reliable, has a framework and tools for real-time control systems on IPCs and allows the developer to focus on the application itself, not the underlying components. The new autonomous gangway has features like auto landing using 2D cameras and 3D sensors to detect landing points. The system can be taught to identify new landing points and use this for future autonomous operations.

Uptime’s active motion compensated gangways are installed in advanced vessels maintaining offshore wind farms and on floatel vessels (floating hotels) for offshore oil exploration. The gangways are designed with high safety criteria as operations involve personnel transfer in bad weather. Uptime gangways was the first system that achieved the DNV certification.

High degree of flexibility and reliability

The CDP development platform has a framework and tools for real-time integration of advanced sensors. The control system runs on powerful industrial computers for fast calculations, integration of 2D cameras and 3D sensors in combined with standard industrial automation I/O component and instrumentation. Thus, giving both high degree of flexibility and reliability in an advanced, distributed and real-time system.

Digital twins, simulation and HIL test was used to verify the control system quality and operational safety.