Perth-headquartered Harvest Technology Group Limited (ASX: HTG) (Harvest) announced that it has successfully developed a bespoke solution for an oil and gas exploration company, enabling access to real-time data from one of the most remote places on the planet – the sea floor. The next-generation system uses acoustic transfer technology to securely transmit data 24/7 from a monitoring structure on the sea floor to a “smart buoy” at the surface.
What is the market offering of the solution?
The smart buoy solutions acts as a modem to ultimately communicate data back onshore via mobile or satellite link – at a fraction of the bandwidth typically required, alleviating the challenge of relying on retrospective data to make critical operational decisions.
The tech is self-powered so it can operate for several years without the need for in-person inspection and maintenance, removing people from unsafe environments, reducing carbon emissions and eliminating the high costs associated with traditional subsea monitoring.
What does the solution mean for the mining industry?
“Harvest’s Nodestream™ protocol allows customers to receive a live video feed of their subsea assets from anywhere via any mobile device with Internet access. Another important feature is the ability to alert onshore headquarters when there is a major change in sensor readings, so customers can respond quickly in emergencies or monitor until intervention is required,” commented Head of Harvest’s Solution Architecture, Jimmy Dean.
“Top operators are adopting tech to gain a competitive edge. Shipping, ports, oil and gas exploration, renewable energy, aquaculture, environmental researchers, and offshore wind farms know you need the best data to make decisions, and the best data isn’t yesterday’s data, it’s live-streamed data,” says Harvest’s Product Design and Delivery Lead, Jason King.
Harvest’s R&D is conducted in-house by its 20 developers. Many have first-hand experience working in remote offshore operations, away from loved ones and onshore expertise. This drives them to solve challenges when operating remotely. Last year, Harvest invested nearly $5 million in R&D, plus $1m to purpose-build its innovation hub in Perth’s Technology Park.
