SEG 2007 in San Antonio

IN THIS ISSUE:

• Geodesists, Seismic Surveyors, Survey helpers and office processors wanted by various companies in the USA. Field personnel must have experience of GPS and Inertial survey. Office specialists must know GPSeismic™.

• How accurate must Seismic Stake Out and Survey be: hint there are 2 different types of accuracies…

• Short History of “Orientation”… got your compass?

• And of course all the News and Tips: seismic, survey, geodesy, and others…

• Also: your letters and suggestions

• Oh and see you at our booth at ION and SEG 2007…

INERTIAL NEWS

• Brain's Inertial Navigation System Pinpointed… how do we walk from A to B in the dark… www.sciencedaily.com

• New Systron Donner Automotive Inertial Measurement Unit comes packaged in a rugged housing no bigger than a deck of cards: www.engineeringtalk.com

• New Affordable Airborne Inertial Navigation System Polytech of Sweden is offering new INS for airborne photography. www.polytech.se

• Analog Devices debuts tri-axis inertial measurement unit …The ADIS16355 IMU provides six-degrees-of-freedom motion sensing in a form factor smaller than a 1-in. cube…www.tmworld.com

• March 1, 2007 Richard Packard
UC Berkeley Superfluid Josephson Weak Links: Physics and Applications Colloquium … “these sensors may advance the state of the art for geodesy, navigation and matter wave interferometry in general…”

[R.Packard designed the Quantum gyroscope]...

•  “GNSS Solutions” will be offering full line of tutorials on September 24-25, 2007 in Fort Worth, Texas prior to the ION GNSS 2007 Conference. Highlights are:

• 25 tutorials (5 comprehensive tracks)
• 5 extended evening sessions
• 12 new expert instructors
• New pricing and various discounts
• New topics include:

• Updated Courses from last year.
• Additional information on the GNSS Solutions ION GNSS 2007   Tutorial can be found at: www.gnsssolutions.com

• Pricing and discount information are detailed at:: www.gnssolutions.com                                 

• Inertial MEMS Reports from “Yole Développement”.    Available May 2007:

The inertial MEMS market is expected to show a 13% growth over the 2006-2011 periods. The main trends identified by Yole Développement are:

• Stabilization of the automotive market due to increased  competition: 1% CAGR
• Boom of consumer applications with 35% GAGR over the same period thanks to the achievement of the below $2 price target
• High growth of industrial, medical and defence markets: from 9% to 18% CAGR

SURVEY NEWS

 POB: Of Light and Time

by Mudit Mathur
July 1, 2007 Understanding LiDAR for resource management…

www.pobonline.com

• May 22, 2007:US Township and Range Land Survey Info for Google Earth… www.gearthblog.com

·• 04 June 2007 Ordnance Survey customers move ahead on OS MasterMap journey Ordnance Survey takes an important step forward in the development of Great Britain’s most highly detailed geographic information… www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk


• BEIJING, June 21 (Xinhua) -- China will start its second national land survey on July 1st. news.xinhuanet.com

• Leica Geosystems to Open 'Geomatics Center of Excellence' in Houston, TX. Friday, 15 June 2007 www.amerisurv.com

• Release of EPSG Geodetic Parameter Dataset v6.13      (July 16, 2007)

This release (Version 6.13) of the EPSG Geodetic Parameter Dataset comprises of data corrections and updates to the v6.12 release of February 2007. The EPSG Geodetic Parameter Dataset is maintained by the Geodesy Subcommittee of the Surveying and Positioning Committee of the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers (OGP). This version and prior archived versions may be downloaded without charge from www.epsg.org.. The dataset will continue to be known as the EPSG Geodetic Parameter Dataset.
 

OIL, GAS & SEISMIC NEWS

• EU threatens to exclude Gazprom from Nord Stream project… The German companies BASF and E.ON are the partners of Gazprom in the Nord Stream project. 51 % owned by Gazprom and 24.5 % owned by BASF and E.ON each.

• BP issues annual survey of world energy use in 2006. 13-06-07 World energy consumption rose 2.4 % last year, slowing from a rise of 3.2 % in 2005, while China's energy use soared 8.4 %, BP said in its annual survey of global trends. Global growth in 2006 was just above the 10-year average, and the rate of growth slowed for every fuel except nuclear power, the oil company said in its Statistical Review of World Energy.

• New 3D seismic shoot over Poland's Fences Concession (OGI)
(7/25/2007) FX Energy reported today it and the Polish Oil and Gas Company have approved a new 3D seismic acquisition program...

• Venezuela Plans to Double Investment in Oil Sector Wednesday, July 25, 2007 - Venezuela's state-owned oil company, PDVSA, has scheduled this year investments of $10.07 billion in exploration and production projects, almost double the figure for 2006. www.rigzone.com


• PGS Acquires EM Company MTEM Limited (June 20, 2007) Oslo, Norway, Petroleum Geo-Services ASA (’PGS’) (OSE and NYSE: PGS) announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire MTEM Limited (‘MTEM’), a provider of electromagnetic (EM) services used to detect the presence of hydrocarbons, for a price of USD 275 million on a debt free basis.

OTHER NEWS

• Cables connecting USB devices to PCs may soon disappear thanks to Wireless USB, a short-range wireless communications technology developed by nonprofit USB Implementers Forum Inc. (USB-IF), which also developed the USB 2.0 standard.

www.pcworld.com
 

IN THIS ISSUE:
• News
• The B-PINS today
• Suggestions
• Inertial & other survey tips
• A short history of orientation…
• The rest of the World

ZEST - A monthly newsletter providing information, tips, insights and commentaries on the use of Zupt inertial navigation systems, other inertial systems, and their software, bug tracking, navigation in general, seismic survey, the use of GP Seismic™, and internet links etc

 To subscribe, email us at:              
   jg@zupt.com     

INERTIAL TIPS

Real-Time versus Post-Processing accuracies
An Unaided Land Inertial Navigation system has 2 different accuracies that are –surprisingly- unrelated: the real-time accuracy and the post-processed accuracy.

• Real Time accuracy refers to the error in navigation that affects your position as you survey. It is a very regular (quasi-linear) drift in 3-dimension, from the known point you start from, until the moment you can tie your traverse to a second known point. If you are “staking out” markers as you go, those points are further and further away from their theoretical position (“preplot” or pre-computed positions). If your tie is 10 feet horizontally after a few miles, the last marker was also close to being 10 feet off.

• Post-processed accuracy is the accuracy of the coordinates computed for these markers, adjusted by reverse compensating that drift as measured at the tie point, back to each marker on the line. This adjustment over distance traversed is remarkably efficient in land Inertial survey because the drift is so linear. Therefore, even though the last marker was 10 feet “off”, its computed coordinates are correct to around 1.5 foot (1 sigma) or better. As a matter of fact, if the drift was perfectly linear, the final coordinates would have no error at all! This post-processed accuracy represents the

“residuals” of the error compensation and is independent of the length of the traverse. It only depends on the “linearity” of the drift…

• The frequency of ties therefore depends on the real-time accuracy that is acceptable. In geophysics it is the “Offset from preplot”, and that acceptable offset is up to ¼ of the Common Depth Points (CDP) bin size. So tie points are set every 2 or 3 miles of traverse. For a more accurate stake out job, ties can be set much closer apart.

• This is why 10 to 20ft (4 to 7m) inertial ties are acceptable in seismic. It only means that the stakes in the field will be between 0 and 20 ft “off” the mark (preplot), but their final coordinates have an accuracy of between 1 foot or 2 in each dimension (see study in the last “Zest”).

• In classic Inertial Network traverses of lore, before the advent of GPS, gimbaled INS were used to establish control, and they tied every 50 or 100 kilometers…The real-time accuracy didn’t matter since only the compensated values were used. It is important to allow large ties in real-time to maintain productivity.

SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT of B-PINS

What still needs to be done on the field software of our Backpack Portable Inertial System Version 2.0 includes:

Plus new suggestions, including the email from Glenn (see in “Your Letters” hereunder…)
 

THE WHEEL ETC… a short history of orientation…

• The wheel is thought to have been invented in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) in the 5th millennium BC, originally probably as a potter’s wheel…
• As much as it later had a great influence on civilizations by helping the movement of armies and people on land as much can it be said that its usefulness offshore had to wait for some time…

• The first navigation maps had the curious shape of a T representing the Mediterranean Sea and the Nile inside a circle representing the other “oceans”. Asia and the East (the “Orient” meaning “where the sun rises”)

were at the top together with Paradise (East of Eden). Africa was at the bottom right, and Europe at the bottom left. To read the map properly, you had to put “God at the top” meaning to “Orient” the map: East up.
 

• Many charts of the Middle Ages had a Wind Rose with a large arrow pointing to the East. Every morning the captain of the boat could point that arrow to the rising sun, orient himself and confirm his boat direction.

• Sun and stars where the main sources of orientation for a long time which limited navigation during the cloudy and foggy months of winter…

• The invention of the compass by the Chinese in the 11th century of this era and its use by the European practically immediately (within a century) did revolutionize ship navigation, by allowing “dead reckoning” and sailing under overcast skies, and by convincing map makers to draw their maps and their Wind Roses with the North up…

• The Chinese discovered practically at the exact same time that some medicine they were ingesting as “Elixir of Immortality” was actually explosive and is now known as gunpowder. They actually created the first guns and rocket using it.

• Sailors soon started using compasses to navigate well enough to find other ships and sink them with the cannonballs coming out of their guns.

• In 1817, Johann von Bohnenberger, professor at the University of Tubingen, mounted 3 wheels (rings) on pivots around a heavy ball that he rotated with a string (like a top).
He noticed that the inner ring did “resist considerable effort to alter its position [and direction]” and thus could be used in “illustrating the inertia”.

• Leon Foucault who had already demonstrated the rotation of the earth with a 67m pendulum hanging in the church of “all the gods” (Panthéon) in Paris, built a similar apparatus in 1852 with multiple rings for the same type of demonstration. He called it the “gyroscope”.


• The first practical gyrocompass was designed by Herman Anschutz-Kaempfe in 1903 to orient submarines under the North Pole. Elmer Sperry installed a gyroscope on the USS Delaware in 1911. In 1914 Sperry tried to patent the gyroscope in Europe and was sued by Anschutz-Kaempfe. Sperry hired the former Swiss patent examiner Albert Einstein as an expert witness, but Einstein supported the claims of Anschutz-Kaempfe who prevailed.


• This is how the wheel finally started helping offshore (and underwater) navigation…


• Those early gyrocompasses didn’t work so well in heavy seas, in particular when heading to Southwest or Southeast for example.


• Anschutz-Kaempfe’s employee and cousin Maximilian Schuler found a way to tune the gyrocompass to eliminate these errors. He found that the optimal pendulum period for this tuning was 84.4 minutes similar to the period of a pendulum as long as the radius of the Earth. [a pendulum of length L has the same period as a satellite of orbital radius L].


• At the same time Robert H. Goddard in the USA proposed to use these gyrocompasses to navigate airplanes, and later the modern rocket
that he invented using the nozzle designed by the Suede Gustav de Laval. Nobody in the US Armed forces saw value in this research before World War II…


• We’ll talk about Goddard and Werner Von Braun in our next issue of Zest…

 

• In the 18th and 19th century it was decided to cover the hulls of ships with metal plates to protect then from these dangerous projectiles.

•That’s when the compasses stopped working (due to the presence of metal).
 

Last word
You can find our previous newsletter on our web site. Please let us know what you would like to see in a newsletter. Send us info, tips, suggestions, links, pictures etc… let us know if you want your questions or comments to remain private or to appear in the newsletter. Circulate it around, and /or give us email addresses of others who would like to receive it.

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Find our link “Feedback” under Contacts on our web site. Please use it to send us any info, not only on bugs in our software, but suggestions etc…

www.zupt.com/feedback

See you soon!
 

YOUR LETTERS

Good morning! I told you I would email some of my thoughts on the software, sorry it has taken me so long to get to this. Just wasn't a priority while I was on break.

1. I think that having the azimuths displayed while in the "offset steer screen" can be a little busy. Maybe it could be hidden and brought back similar to the keyboard is hidden and comes into view. Just the way it is designed right now your attention is automatically drawn to the azimuth edit area and not the inline, lateral display.

2. There were a couple areas where I thought it might be nice for the keyboard to come up automatically. It would be nice to have it there when the first thing you were going to be doing was typing, unfortunately I can't think of the specific areas at the moment.

3. I don't know how hard it would be to add a zupt time counter to the display while the recon is loading a file, we have had a few large preplot files that can take a little time to load. In these instances it would be nice to have the zupt time counter displayed so we can be sure we are or need to be zupting.

4. As we discovered two days ago the menus (zing, steer, mission, etc.) are not accessible without the touch screen, as a backup I think it could be really important that they be accessible through the keyboard arrow keys and enter.

5. I know I've told you this before, but I would really like a Fps display, a small one located on the steer menus.

6. Did you ever discover how many decimal points in the offset azimuth that it is actually saving?

7. There are one or two places when I bring up the keyboard I wish I could just scroll up in the window to access the ok button and not have to hide it to be able to see it again.
…
I know some of these are a little critical, just some of my thoughts. If I need to give further detail please let me know.

Thanks,

Glenn

_____________________________________

Your seismic crew map page is very neat. I recently
added a utility in Project Manager that shows the extents of various geoid models on a world map along with contours. It would be pretty cool if there was another capability [...] to provide the [seismic crews] locations and operator.
However, this isn’t something I would use on a web site, rather, it would be available to GPSeismic users.

Rudy.

Seismic Crew Locator

_____________________________________


Dear Sirs,

Re: Seismic Vessel Locator

Please note that vessel G.D. Nalivkin is operated by WGP and not Fugro.
Please could you amend your records.

Best regards
Marcus Smith


 

CSV temporary files…:


From: Crew330Survey [mailto:crew330survey@pgsonshore.com]
Sent: Monday, July 16, 2007 5:10 PM
To: Rudy Lambert
Cc: Cliff Harris
Subject: Question about file extension

Rudy or Cliff,

When I am done with processing my inertial data in quickview, using the zupt function, I usually export or save it as a .csv (comma separated value) in case I need to glance at it real quick I can just pull it up. When I went to save it as such with version 2007, it only has a .psv (pipe separated value), I don’t know if this was just a glitch or if there really is such a file extension. If so please let me know which program I need to read it. I tried to change it after the fact and make it a .csv but it doesn’t like that. There aren’t any other options to change it to either. It is o.k. if I don’t do it tonight, I can go back and fix them later once you all tell me what I need for these files.

Regards,
Jim McCarty
Crew 330 Survey
Office:936-545-0285
Cell:281-543-2980

 

From: Rudy Lambert [mailto:rudy@gpseismic.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2007 7:19 AM
To: 'Crew330Survey'
Cc: 'Cliff Harris'; 'Joel Gillet'
Subject: RE: Question about file extension

Hi Jim,

We received a request from another Zupt user that would allow them to save a file after they had done some editing, and then retrieve that file later and finish processing in QuikView.
Because some users were placing commas in some of the fields, the safest thing to do was to use pipes (‘|’) to separate the data. A pipe delimited file can be imported into Excel. You just have to specify the delimiter.

However, because you are my running partner and a damn nice Irish lad, I added a File menu item to export a CSV file.

Note that this is a 2007.1 library and can only be used with that version.

Just drop it in the GPSeismic folder, replacing the file of the same name.

Rudy
 

Find our link “Feedback” under Contacts on our web site. Please use it to send us any info, not only on bugs in our software, but suggestions etc…

www.zupt.com/feedback