Cellula Joins Ocean Networks Canada

Cellula Robotics Ltd. has joined the Ocean Networks Canada (ONC) Innovation Center’s Industry Network.  Cellula looks forward to working with ONC to develop new markets for our seafloor drills and geotechnical tools around the world.

Ocean Networks Canada (www.oceannetworks.ca) was created in 2007 to manage the cabled observatory being constructed on the sea floor off the B.C. coast. A total of approximately $200M has been invested to date to build and operate the Observatory, primarily with funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) and the Province of British Columbia. It is the first, largest and most advanced regional-scaled cabled observatory in the world. The Ocean Networks Canada Innovation Centre is a business division within Ocean Networks Canada that has leveraged this observatory to develop a suite of products and services called Smart Ocean Systems™.

The Centre was established as a Centre for Excellence in Commercialization and Research (CECR) in 2009 under the Canadian Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE) program to leverage this investment, accelerate the development of new technology, grow industry, and help our international clients build their own ocean observatories.

New Hires

Cellula Robotics is pleased to announce the hiring of two new staff members as our team continues to grow:

Alex Smith joins us as our latest Software Developer. Alex brings 12 years experience in Earth Sciences and Geophysics including six years in Japan studying earthquakes and the thermal regime of subduction zones at the Earth Simulator Centre in Yokohama for JAMSTEC. As a Certified Labview Associate Developer, Alex has developed software to control a full waveform resistivity/IP system, a water contamination detection system and various geophysical and observation equipment aboard submersible ROV’s.

Adrian Woodroffe joins us as our new Business Development Manager. Adrian is a Professional Engineer with 15 years of experience in subsea and satellite engineering.

Successful ISO Audit

Cellula Robotics Ltd. successfully passed their first of two surveillance audits for maintaining ISO 9001:2008 certification.  The audit was passed with zero non-conformances, a tribute to the time and effort dedicated to the Quality Management System (QMS) by both the quality committee and the rest of the staff this past year.  The Cellula QMS process will continue to evolve as we strive to meet and exceed every client’s expectations.

Modular Autonomous Biosampler

Cellula Robotics Ltd. has been awarded a contract by the University of Delaware to design and build a unique ROV mounted deep water Modular Autonomous Biosample (MAB).  The MAB supports three simultaneous pore size filters with each capable of taking over discrete 200 samples.  The MAB will be capable of capturing bacteria grade samples with no cross-contamination and provides long term preservation using ethanol, RNA and high-salt buffers.  Built in environmental sensors measure CDT, Dissolved Oxygen and Chlorophyll-A.  The controller allows user, event or timer triggered samples.

The design phase of this project is due to complete in May 2014 with the first prototype ready for sea trials towards the end of 2014.  Cellula is pleased to continue our relationship with the University of Delaware with the ongoing development of scientific plankton samplers.

This project is made possible through Principal Investigators Art Trembanis and Craig Cary, as well as the funding from the National Science Foundation (OCE-1235133).

AUV Payload Contract

In 2012, Cellula Robotics Ltd. was awarded the preliminary design phase for a complex electro-mechanical AUV prototype payload.  Cellula has now been awarded the manufacture and testing phase for this project.

ISO Certification

As of November 2012, Cellula’s Quality Management System is certified to ISO 9001:2008. Cellula successfully attained accreditation on the first attempt. Cellula will continue to uphold the standards of ISO 9001:2008 through audits with SAI-Global.

By adhering to these principles, we endeavor to always bring the best value to our customers while delivering tools and infrastructure for the future.

Seafloor Drills Presentation

On Tuesday May 1st, at the 2012 Offshore Technology Conference in Houston, Texas, Mr. Jon Machin of Geomarine Ltd. (UK) presented a paper on the Canyon Offshore “ROVDrill Mk.2” systems developed by Cellula Robotics.  This paper, which is published in the 2012 OTC Proceedings (OTC23395), describes these seafloor drill systems and their application to geotechnical and soil investigation surveys.  These two drills were developed by Cellula Robotics Ltd. with design input from Geomarine and Canyon Offshore, and tooling and CPTs provided by Geomarine.  The paper “considers the key design features of presently available rigs of the current generation of subsea drill rigs and contrasts some of the key conceptual design differences between them”.  It then focuses on the ROVDrill Mk.2 design features and performance, and the advantages of seabed drillin

Cellula has moved…

We have moved into new offices at 628 Carnarvon Street, New Westminster – right next door to the old main office. We’re now all together in the same building and we have a bit of extra space to accommodate growth. We also now have our own parking area so visitors will no longer have to pay for on street parking – just ask us for the gate key when you get here.

Our phone & fax numbers stay the same:
Ph: 604-540-5530
Fax: 604-525-5570

Subsea Excavator Update

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The Cellula/Trinity Subsea Excavator successfully completed its first  excavation operation in November-December, 2011.  Two excavation tools were used – a dual pick-cutter cutterhead and a standard shovel.

Seamless Stitching of Images

Dr. Peter Hampton, a controls engineer here at Cellula Robotics Ltd., has recently co-authored a conference paper titled “Seamless Stitching of Images Based on a Haar Wavelet 2D Integration Method” with Ioana Sevcenco and Dr. Pan Agathoklis of the University of Victoria.

This paper is on mosaicking images in a manner that hides the borders of the sub-images.  The paper focuses on photographic images, but has potential for generating seamless maps from underwater surveys.  The process is resilient to misregistrations of adjacent images.  Further, the computation cost scales linearly with the number of pixels, allowing for much larger data sets to be processed than competing methods.

Left: Two misregistered images with different light intensity mosaicked together. Right: Reconstructed image using Dr. Hampton’s patented process and the same images.

The paper is:

I. Sevcenco, P.J. Hampton, P. Agathoklis “Seamless Stitching of Images Based on a Haar Wavelet 2D Integration Method” to be published in IEEE’s 17th Int. Conf. on Digital Signal Processing (DSP2011), July 2011