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14 MTR June 2011 news From the search for discarded trash to the discovery of shipwrecked treas- ure to search and recovery missions for law enforcement, the demand and applications have increased for more sophisticated underwater exploration devices and underwater position soft- ware. In the last few months, KCF Technologies released software for its underwater navigation system, the Smart Tether, along with the new Tether Tender, a tether measuring device. Craig Thorngren, a retired Coast Guard Chief and the owner and principal of Submerged Recovery and Inspection Services, has been working with the Smart Tether prod- uct for about three years. “The soft- ware engineers deserve a huge round of applause from those who go out and use this gear regularly. They’ve not only improved the reliability of the system, they’ve made it much eas- ier to use,” said Thorngren. Smart Tether V6.0 – a complete redesign from its previous system – offers the ability to export data to Google Earth for enhanced mapping and GPS to navigate the ROV from a moving point. KCF Technologies has also added advanced zoom, pan, and rotate abilities, along with a quicker updating rate of 10 Hz to allow real time navigation. “It’s a very intuitive onscreen display,” said Thorngren. “The way you can overlay charts maps shows you where you’ve got coverage, where you’re painting, where you’re going, and whether you’re using sonar or video searching. It just gives you a very high degree of confidence that you’ve searched an area and that there’s nothing in that area,” said Thorngren. Tom Wrasse, the Conservation Warden Supervisor for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and new Smart Tether user, also believes that the Smart Tether will help tremendously in his Department’s search missions. “What I like about it the best is that I can now know where I’ve been and where I am, and I can mark targets on a map and I can go back to them if I need to. We’re doing a lot of search- ing — a lot of our work has been searching for victims — and if we can eliminate going back over areas because we’ve already been there, we can do a full coverage quicker,” said Wrasse. www.smarttether.com KCF Technologies: Smart Tether Smart Tether version 6.
