ION Sells Compasses for Subsea Vehicle Navigation

ION announced today the second sale of a number of its highly differentiated optical magnetic heading sensors to enable subsea vehicles to quickly reach their desired destinations.

In the fourth quarter, successful field trials demonstrated the advanced compasses’ accuracy in GPS-deprived environments and led to delivery of the first commercial order in the first quarter.

In less than a year, ION's devices business line made adjustments to adopt the compass offering from ION’s towed streamer positioning solution to suit the underwater vehicle market’s navigation requirements.

Executive Vice President of ION’s Operations Optimization group, Chris Usher, said, “In multiple tests we have demonstrated improved positioning accuracy to under half a percent of the distance traveled, without the aid of GPS or acoustic navigation and without locally calibrating the compass. Our mechanically gimbaled optical magnetic heading sensor does not require calibration across different latitudes as the Earth’s magnetic field changes. We are exploring additional commercial opportunities for our technologies in marine robotics and other industries.”