Results of
our reader s poll:
22% prefer Inertial News
14% Survey News
14% Oil & Gas News
13% Inertial tips
9% MEMS & Nano
Also, a few of our reader’s comments:
<<
Still the coolest newsletter out there>> Steve T. of Petro-Canada
<<
It’s all interesting…>> Noel Z. of ExxonMobil
<<
I like your newsletter…>> Hans W. of Wehrli
& Assoc.
<<
Keep on doing what you have been doing. All of your articles are interesting,
and thanks for them.>> Derek S. of ExxonMobil
And many more…
INERTIAL NEWS
* 21000 hits. The ZUPT site showing the
location of most Oil and Seismic companies in the World has had about 20000
hits so far. Our Seismic Crew locator is reaching 21000 hits, click on these
links:
* Repeatable,
precise vehicle testing by OXTS: Click Here
* Wearing inertial sensors: ETH
* Boeing Delivers 1st Laser JDAMs: LJDAM
* Northrop Grumman to Supply Inertial Navigation
Systems for New Spanish Navy Maritime Action Ships: Northrop
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* Virtus Advanced Sensors and Acutronic USA Announce Collaboration to
Develop MEMS Inertial Testing Tools. Virtus 2008
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SURVEY NEWS
* Topcon Acquires Voxis Inc., Releases GLS-1000 Laser Scanner. September 2, 2008 . Topcon
* Web Exclusive: FEMA Goes Digital. Fema
* Land survey begins to end Nano deadlock. Reuters
* MiDA installs CORS Station at Bawjiase,
Ghana. Tuesday, 16 Sep 2008. Mida 
• “Coordinates” a monthly
magazine on positioning navigation and beyond… Coordinates
* Intergeo 2008. Intergeo
* European Surveyors
Congress in Strasbourg .
geometre-strasbourg
OIL, GAS & SEISMIC NEWS
* PetroFalcon seizes hydrocarbon plays in Venezuela
19-08-08 While multinationals with assets
in Venezuela ponder whether to stay there during the volatile times that have
accompanied the hydrocarbon, telecommunications, cement and steel
nationalizations spearheaded by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Frias, one micro cap Canadian company has seized
opportunities and grown to become both the largest acreage holder and
independent producer in Venezuela.
Gas & Oil
* Shell sees two year
exploration phase in heavy crude blocks – Colombia. Multinational
oil company Shell
(NYSE: RDS-B) expects the exploration program for its new heavy crude blocks in
Colombia to last at least two years, Shell E&P Americas VP of new
business development Olivier Lazare told BNamericas. bnamericas
• North American Power
Generation Construction Costs Rise 27 Percent in 12 Months to New High:
IHS/CERA Power Capital Costs Index. IHS-CERA
• Petrobras confirms giant Jupiter discovery off Brazil
PetroleoBrasileiro
today reported it has completed drilling the Jupiter pre-salt exploration
well in the Santos Basin off Brazil...
 (OGI).
• Correa hails crushing victory in constitutional referendum. Ecuador s
President Rafael Correa celebrated the passing of a referendum on a new
Constitution, in Guayaquil, Ecuador, Sunday, Sept. 28, 2008.
(PetroleumWorld.com)
• France
to help Venezuela
to develop nuclear energy
French Foreign Minister
Bernard Kouchner said on Thursday, France
is "ready to work with our Venezuelan friends" to develop a
civilian nuclear power program. (…)
Also, France s
participation in the project of Orinoco Oil Belt in Venezuela, will be discussed on Friday by Venezuela officials and
Paris-based oil giant Total…
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A SHORT HISTORY OF
ELECTRO-MAGNETIC SURVEY
* The ancients were
acquainted with curious properties possessed by two minerals, amber (“electron”) and magnetic iron ore. The former, when rubbed, attracts light bodies:
the latter has the power of attracting iron.
The Olmec may have discovered
and used the geomagnetic lodestone compass earlier than 1000 BC. If true,
this predates the Chinese discovery of the geomagnetic lodestone compass by
more than a millennium.
A number of objects found in Iraq in 1938 dated to the early
centuries AD (Sassanid Mesopotamia), called the Baghdad
Battery, resembles a galvanic
cell and is believed by some to have been used for electroplating.
* Italian physician Girolamo Cardano wrote about
electricity in De Subtilitate (1550) distinguishing
between electrical and magnetic forces.
The first usage of the word electricity is ascribed to Sir Thomas Browne in his 1646 work, Pseudodoxia Epidemica.
While preparing for an evening lecture on 21 April 1820, Hans Christian Ørsted developed an
experiment which provided evidence that surprised him. As he was setting up
his materials, he noticed a compass needle deflected from magnetic north when
the electric current from the battery he was using was switched on and off. Soon thereafter he published his findings, proving that an
electric current produces a magnetic field as it flows through a wire.
* Since the 19th century we know
that what is thought of as "light" is actually a propagating oscillatory disturbance
in the electromagnetic field, i.e., an electromagnetic wave. Different frequencies of
oscillation give rise to the different forms of electromagnetic radiation, from radio waves at
the lowest frequencies, to visible light at intermediate frequencies, to gamma rays at
the highest frequencies.
In 1912, Conrad Schlumberger, then a professor at the École de Mines
de Paris conceived
the idea of prospecting for metal ore deposits
by using the electrical conductivity of
ore rocks to distinguish them from the less conductive surrounding country
rocks.
In 1923, Conrad and his brother Marcel began conducting geophysical
surveys in various countries including Romania, Serbia, Canada, South Africa, Belgian
Congo, and the USA. In 1926, the
brothers formed Société de Prospection Électrique to
develop the theory that adding resistivity information
from deeper formations would increase the effectiveness of the surface oil
prospecting technique.
* The marine Controlled Source
Electromagnetic technique was developed almost three decades ago to study the
conductivity structure beneath the seafloor. An exhaustive and still valid
treatment of the CSEM techniques can be found in Chave
et al. (1991). One advantage of sub-sea measurements is that the highly
conductive sea (approximately 3.2 S/m) acts as a low pass filter for
fluctuating EM fields generated above it either in the ionosphere or magnetosphere.
At frequencies as low as 1 Hz, a few hundred meters of water will practically
completely eliminate the effect of above-water EM sources including the
man-made ones or those due to cultural noises.
As a result weak electromagnetic fields that propagate in
the underlying sediments from a sea-bottom artificial source are measurable
at large transmitter-receiver separations of the order of kilometers.
Recently the
marine CSEM technique was applied commercially to the problem of detecting
the presence of hydrocarbon filled layers in the sub-sea formations (Eidesmo et al., 2002) and a number of companies are now
providing this service.
OTHER NEWS
* Exclusive: The methane time bomb… Arctic scientists discover new global warming
threat as melting permafrost releases millions of tons of a gas 20 times more
damaging than carbon dioxide. Methane
* Researchers
hone seismic skills to peer inside glaciers. Seismic data enable scientists to peer inside
melting glaciers before they calve. Scientific American.
* How
Randomness Rules Our World and Why We Cannot See It. Randomness.
* Honda,
Yamaha target electric motorbike…
Yamaha aims to launch electric motorcycles
by 2010 with a range of 100 km (60 miles) on a single charge, comparable to
those with 50cc engine displacements, the paper said.
Honda, the world s top motorcycle maker,
will launch lithium-ion battery electric motorcycles in 2011, targeting
customers such as Japan Post Service that may switch its fleet of about
90,000 motorbikes to electric models, it said. Reuters.
The Japanese company Axle
Corporation already created a new model of electric powered motorbike named
EV-X7:
Axle_Corporation
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IN THIS ISSUE:
* News
* Suggestions
* Inertial tips
* Short history of EM Surveys…
* Mems & Nano
*
Graphically Cool Site of the Month …
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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
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INERTIAL TIPS:
Where should
the real-time navigation of an ROV INS be computed (underwater or at
the surface)?
More and more submarine
Remote Operated Vehicles (ROVs) are using inertial navigation for location
and orientation of underwater structures, work tools (including sonars) and of the vehicle itself.
ROVs are connected to the
surface and the controlling vessel via an umbilical through which a line of
high rate communications can be established.
Inertial Navigation
Systems can typically output raw data (delta angles and acceleration bits)
from their gyroscopes and accelerometers. A Navigation computer uses this raw
information to compute a navigation solution that includes precise three
dimensional position (latitude, longitude, height), plus heading, pitch and
roll as well as various velocity and acceleration information.
There is a temptation by
users and integrators to bring the high rate raw data (up to 500Hz) through
the umbilical and place high power computing and storage capability on the
surface vessel.
The problem with this
solution is the famously unreliable power and communication line through the
ROV umbilical.
Any loss of power or
connection is then catastrophic since inertial navigation can’t be
interpolated in real-time through the gaps in the flow of information, no
matter how short those gaps are.
The only solution after a
micro-outage is then to send the ROV back to the seabed, or on a known
structure, and restart the navigation with its lengthy and therefore costly
realignment procedure.
If the navigation was
meant to be post-processed after tie at the end of the traverse, it also
means that the whole task needs be redone entirely after realignment…
A much better approach is to put the power
source (battery), storage capability and the computing power inside the INS
underwater housing, in particular since processing chips and storage devices
are now so miniaturized, and send to the surface at a much lower rate the
final navigation solution, that is also stored within the unit.
By using this integrated approach, if a catastrophic power failure or
communication interruption happens, the navigation of the underwater INS
continues autonomously, and keeps storing both raw data and final solution
data within the housing, ready to be used when the connection is re-established…
The other advantage of an independent navigation is that the commands the INS
needs in order to accomplish its task are very short and can be sent by other
redundant channels of communication when those exist. One can even imagine
acoustic commands as a backup to wired connections…
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METROLOGY NEWS:
SUBSEA EUROPE
2008 London.
Subsea UK s new London event which will focus on the European and West
African subsea oil and gas markets has secured a high profile line-up of
speakers and sponsors.
The inaugural conference and
exhibition, to be held in the UK capital on 30th of October 2008, has secured
keynote speakers Jonathan Porritt - founding director, Forum for the Future,
Roland Festor - managing director Total E&P UK , Malcolm Webb - chief
executive of Oil and Gas UK, Rune Juliussen - head of research Pareto, Paul
Tooms - Head of Subsea Discipline BP, and Steve Robertson, assistant
director, Douglas-Westwood
GLOSSARY:
Gyro Random
Walk. This value,
given in deg/sqrt(hr), shows the noise of the gyro. The higher the noise
the more noise is measured on the angular rates and on the angles. Some manufacturers
also specify it as the noise density in deg/h/sqrt(Hz). An angular
random walk of 0.003 deg/sqrt(hr) indicates, that the angular error (uncertainty) due
to random walk is e.g. 0.001 deg after 6 minutes (unaided) or 0.0004 deg
after 1 minute (all values one sigma). The angular random walk is very
important for the accuracy of north seeking, because if the random walk
decreases times 2 then the needed duration for north seeking decreases by
times four (if the resolution of the gyro is high enough). IMAR
Navigation.
See also angle
random walk.
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