Marine cable location system
AssigneeMobil Oil Corporation
InventorWalter P. Neeley
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A marine cable location system includes a plurality of magnetic compasses located at known spaced intervals along a cable being towed by a marine vessel. These compass readings are recorded along with an onboard magnetic compass reading, an onboard gyrocompass reading, and satellite navigational information. From these recordings, the X-Y coordinates of cable compasses with respect to vessel heading are determined. These X-Y coordinates are recorded along with the vessel's position and heading on magnetic tape and a cathode-ray tube so as to provide a visual display of the cable position with respect to the vessel.
Claims6
A system for visually displaying the position of a cable towed by a marine vessel, comprising:
- (a) means for providing navigational information signals indentifying the X-Y coordinate of said marine vessel,
- (b) a sensor located on said marine vessel for providing a signal representative of the heading of said marine vessel as it tows said cable through the water,
- (c) a plurality of sensors located at select points along said cable for providing signals representative of the heading of tangents to the cable at said select points,
- (d) means responsive to the signals from said cable sensors, from said marine vessel sensor, and from said navigational information means for determining the X-Y coordinate of each of said plurality of cable sensors,
- (e) a visual display having a matrix of display squares,
- (f) means for entering the X-Y position of said marine vessel along with the X-Y position of said plurality of selected cable points into the matrix of said visual display, whereby squares of the display matrix identified with said entered X-Y positions are visually distinguishable from the remaining squares to display a locus of points defining the configuration of the towed cable,
- (g) means for identifying the X-Y coordinates of obstacles in the path of said cable as it is being towed by said marine vessel, and (h) means for entering the X-Y coordinates of said obstacles into the matrix of said visual display to visually display a mark representing the position of the obstacle relative to the cable.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.