C & C Technologies' second deepwater AUV, C-Surveyor II, recently began field operations in the Gulf of Mexico. The C-Surveyor II vehicle was initially delivered to C & C's corporate headquarters in Lafayette, Louisiana on June 3, 2005.
Over a period of three months, C & C system engineers integrated proprietary hardware and software into this next generation AUV and mobilized it on its mother ship the R/V Northern Resolution.
The C-Surveyor II AUV is modeled after C & C's existing state-of-the-art AUV, C-Surveyor I, and includes numerous advancements.
Survey sensors onboard include a multibeam echosounder, chirp side scan sonar, chirp sub-bottom profiler, methane detector, CTD system, and an Edgetech DW106 sub-bottom profiler customized with narrow transmit and receive beams to permit significantly deeper seabed penetration.
In December 2005, C & C intends to upgrade the chirp side scan sonar to a new Dynamically Focused (DF) sidescan sonar system capable of providing five times more resolution than traditional systems.
Over the next three months, C & C will be performing various surveys for government agencies, as well as the oil and gas industry. These projects include block hazard, pipeline hazard and investigation surveys. C & C, the undisputed worldwide leader in commercial deepwater AUV operations, has the largest market share of any operator. Over the last five years, C & C has surveyed more than 45,000 line-km worldwide on 77 AUV projects.
