News from Kongsberg

The new oe11-143 Underwater HID Lamp was shown for the first time on the Kongsberg Maritime’s stand at Seawork 2008. This High Intensity Discharge lamp provides a tremendous increase in light output compared to a conventional filament based lamp, whilst still only using the same amount of power. Designed specifically for ROV/AUV and other underwater vehicle use, the oe11-143 gives in the region of 5 times the light output - 5600 Lux @ 1 metre - of a conventional 250 Watt filament lamp so by replacing conventional bulbs an immediate increase in lumens without additional power demand is obtained. And this leads to higher quality pictures from the underwater cameras the ROV/AUV is carrying. The oe11-143 is particularly useful when upgrading to High Definition cameras as in addition to the increased illumination, the colour temperature of 3200K exactly matches the ‘indoor’ setting of the Kongsberg Maritime oe14-502 HD camera and also matches the colour temperature of conventional filament bulbs. This means that existing colour cameras that have been set for ‘indoor’ colour temperature on the ROV will still provide true colour rendition. The oe11-143 uses the same power input as conventional lamps and boasts a bulb life of at least eight times longer compared to halogen bulbs, at more than 4000 hours. It features a depth rating of 4500 metres and can operate in water temperatures from -5°C to +40°C making it suitable for every ROV/AUV job possible. It is also simple to install as the lamp head and ballast units are in separate housings. Kongsberg Wins Repeat Order From US Coast Guard and GSA for Underwater Surveillance Systems Kongsberg Maritime is pleased to announce that its Lynnwood, Washington-based division, Kongsberg Underwater Technology Inc., recently delivered an equipment reorder from the US Coast Guard for the USCG’s Integrated Antiswimmer Systems (IAS) program. The equipment contract follows an initial IAS contract and is administered through a continuous contract with the U.S. federal government’s General Services Administration. Following 9/11, the US Coast Guard was charged with assessing the level of threat, and the capability to deal with it, within every US port. A large concern was the threat of malicious swimmers and divers to commercial piers, government and military vessels, cruise ships, terminals and other high-value assets. The IAS program was developed in response to this threat. Kongsberg underwater surveillance system technology forms the basis of the IAS system and combined with software enables the IAS teams to detect, track, classify, localize, notify and respond to potential underwater threats. The system’s processor captures a wide acoustic swath and then classifies the acquired contacts and alerts system operators to their presence. Sonar images positively identify whether the detection is a swimmer (threat) and not just debris, marine life or some other object. The system design is mobile and is deployed when necessary to protect high-value assets and events. The additional components supplied by Kongsberg will further enhance the US Coast Guard’s IAS program and its future success. About Kongsberg Underwater Technology Since 1990 Kongsberg Underwater Technology Inc. has been established in Lynnwood, Washington as the North American centre for hydrographic survey systems engineering, production, integration and customer support. Kongsberg Underwater Technology Inc. is a leading supplier to the U.S. Navy, academic institutions and commercial markets for underwater acoustic systems and solutions. Kongsberg Underwater Technology Inc. is a division of Kongsberg Maritime. Kongsberg Mesotech Ltd., (KML) based in Port Coquitlam Canada is the manufacturer of the diver detection sonar. KML supplies a worldwide customer base with a range of products for defence, fisheries, oilfield, scientific and other underwater acoustic applications. KML is also part of Kongsberg Maritime Subsea. Kongsberg Maritime together with Kongsberg Defense and Aerospace form Kongsberg Gruppen, a publicly traded company on the Oslo Stock Exchange. New easy-to-use HAIN The HAIN (Hydroacoustic Aided Inertial Navigation) system of Kongsberg Maritime has been criticized as having high user threshold. The introduction of the new front-end should put an end to this criticism. HAIN is an add-on to Kongsberg Maritime’s traditional acoustic positioning. It provides the user with stable and continuous measurements of position, attitude and speed. HAIN may often improve the quality of positioning by a factor of 2 or more. The old system used text files to specify the settings of the system. Users had to open these in some text editor and manually edit the different entries. This usually led to many copies of the same text file, which was hard to keep track of. There was also checking of the input. Wrongful settings sometimes led to system malfunction and were hard to identify. The new user interface of HAIN is now fully integrated into Kongsberg Maritimes APOS, which is the Acoustic Positioning Operator Station of the HiPAP (High Precision Acoustic Positioning) system. This means that HAIN operators now can set up and view all necessary settings for HAIN in a familiar way. The interface also checks the operator’s input for obvious errors, and explains what values are available. A complete and context sensitive online help is also available from the user interface. This allows the operator to get immediate help while setting up the system, and makes the old hard-to-find paper manual more or less obsolete. The online help is also always up to date. The new front end was released February of this year and was immediately very well received by both customers and Kongsberg Maritime’s own service personnel. The inherently complex system has from being difficult now become easy-to-use. The new front end of HAIN is available with releases HAIN 2.0 and APOS 4.8 and higher. Kongsberg Maritime has also announced that HAIN will provide users with automatically post-processed data. The post processed navigation from HAIN is available to the user after a set delay. The length of the delay will determine the increase in quality (longer delay = better quality). Post-processing of navigation data greatly enhances the quality, sometimes by a factor 3 or more. As of today post processing of navigation data is done manually with dedicated software like Kongsberg Maritime’s NavLab. However this is often time consuming, and extra work. The feature will be fully available to customers towards the end of 2008. Interested customers may contact subsea@kongsberg.com for details on this. Kongsberg Maritime acquire UK Company GeoAcoustics Ltd. Kongsberg Maritime has signed an agreement to purchase the UK based sonar company GeoAcoustics Ltd. of Great Yarmouth, for approximately MNOK 42 - about 5.3 mill EURO. The acquisition will enhance Kongsberg Maritime's market position as GeoAcoustics' products will complement KONGSBERG's product portfolio. GeoAcoustics has 30 years of experience in underwater acoustics. It has an excellent reputation in the market, especially for side scan sonars and technology for sub-bottom profiling. In 2007/08 GeoAcoustics had a turnover of approximately MNOK 42 and had 43 employees, including its subsidiaries in Mumbai and Singapore. For further information, please contact:  Executive VP Rolf Arne Klepaker - cellphone: +47 9920 3975 or  Executive VP Bjørn Tore Frøshaug - cellphone: +47 9921 4431. About GeoAcoustics Ltd. GeoAcoustics Ltd is a world-leading manufacturer of sonar seabed survey equipment. The business was founded in 1978 and has its headquarters in a modern well-equipped factory in Great Yarmouth, UK. In the early 1980’s the business was acquired by Ferranti, who at the time were a leading UK defence contractor. In 1991 the business was bought back from Ferranti by way of a management buyout, led by its original founder. Our customer list includes commercial survey companies, navies and marine research establishments in over 60 countries and, in order to provide this worldwide customer base with a high level of support, we have established regional sales and support facilities in Singapore, Houston and Mumbai. Hydroid integration process underway The acquisition of Hydroid Inc was completed by the beginning of June this year. It was followed up with an immediate meeting in Horten to get the integration process of Hydroid going, including the marketing and sales issues. This last meeting of 12 – 13th August at the beautiful Pocasset, Cape Cod premises was a follow up for the marketing and sales of our new range of AUV’s Svein Otto Schjerven, the AUV, Marketing and Sales man¬ager said that we are looking to get our Web pages updated with information as soon as possible. We will also visit our sister companies and agent’s involved soon to introduce the new AUV Range. We plan to produce new marketing material and brochures for our sales network. This job starts immediately as does cooperation between Hydroid and KM Sales in Horten. We will focus on the market and sales network world wide, and get it operational as soon as possible; we therefore have to make sure that our network has all the information needed to support the sale of the Hydroid AUVs. Hydroid Inc is one of the world leaders in autonomous underwater vehicle technology and they have an impressive range of AUVs ranging from the Remus 100 to the Remus 6000. The joint forces of Hydroid and Kongsberg mean that our customers will have a wider and more comprehensive product range with more choices of sensor capability. Our service and support will be strengthened through merging our networks. After the completed acquisition process between Hydroid LCC, USA and Kongsberg Maritime AS, a management team from the two companies met in Horten for the first time. The mission was to start the integration process and share knowledge and information between the two. Gardline Purchases EM 710 Multibeam System for its latest Survey Vessel Vigilant Gardline has purchased its third medium depth EM 710 multibeam system. This latest system is a 1 x 1 degree version with full FM pulse and dual swath capability and is to be commissioned on Gardline’s latest survey vessel the Vigilant, a former fisheries patrol vessel. Gardline is a leading geophysical, geotechnical, hydrographic and environmental survey specialist, operating a fleet of dedicated multi role survey vessels and coastal survey vessels permanently mobilised with fully integrated equipment packages, which can be readily deployed and can easily accommodate additional specialised equipment as each survey dictates. This purchase brings a total of 16 Kongsberg multibeam systems permanently installed on Gardline’s fleet of survey vessels, providing clients with a full multibeam survey capability in any depth from a few metres to full ocean depth. The latest EM 710 installation on the Vigilant will have a depth capability down to approx 2,000m utilising the FM pulse, and the system will provide a high data density output from the dual swath function. Initial trials on the survey vessel Tridens 1, have shown promising results so far, with a doubling of the data density delivered from the single swath EM 710 system. Vigilant, with its enhanced survey speed capability is expected to enter service in Q3 2008. For further details contact hydro@gardline.com