Underwater device for acquiring images of a water bottom
AssigneePlanblue GmbH
InventorsRaja Kandukuri, Guy Rigot
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
The invention relates to an underwater device for capturing images of a seabed with multiple electrical function units, a control program for controlling one electrical function unit, another control program for controlling another electrical function unit, and at least one control device. The underwater device is characterised in that the underwater device is designed such that the control program and the other control program are selectively executable on the same control device or the control program is executable on one control device and the other control program is executable on another control device.
Claims20
An underwater device (1) for capturing images of a seabed, the underwater device comprising:
- multiple electrical function units,
- a first control program for controlling a first electrical function unit of the multiple electrical function units,
- a second control program for controlling a second electrical function unit of the multiple electrical function units,
- a data bus providing bidirectional data exchange, wherein the data bus is a data line connection,
- a first control device connected to the data bus, and
- a second control device that is a separate unit from the first control device and does not share a circuit board with the first control device, wherein the second control device is selectively connected to the data bus,
- a switch connected to the data bus between the first control device and the second control device, the switch having a plurality of connection interfaces,
- wherein the multiple electrical function units are connected to the data bus and the multiple electrical function units can be modified by adding and/or replacing electrical function units by way of the plurality of connection interfaces;
- wherein at least one additional control device is connectable to the data bus by way of the plurality of connection interfaces;
- wherein a level of processing power needed to execute the first control program and the second control program depends on an operational deployment of the underwater device and/or the multiple electrical function units;
- wherein (i) the first control program and the second control program are selectively executable on the first control device and (ii) the first control program and the second control program are selectively executable on the first control device and on the second control device, respectively, wherein allocation of execution is selected based on the level of processing power needed to execute the first control program and the second control program;
- wherein the multiple electrical function units are configured to communicate with each other using a message-based communication protocol having a publish/subscribe mechanism.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.