Forum Energy Technologies, Inc., a global oilfield products company, serving the drilling, subsea, completion, production and infrastructure sectors of the oil and natural gas industry, has delivered a custom-built simulator to California Science Center. The dual simulator station provides visitors with the experience of operating a subsea remotely operated vehicle (ROV) for themselves.
The core technology used in the simulator is Forum’s proprietary VMAX™ ROV Simulation Software used by Forum’s ROV customers for training and evaluation of their ROV pilots.
Forum’s development team have tailored the control interface within the software to allow the virtual ROV to be flown by visitors with no prior experience. The control consoles provided use the same hardware as Forum’s standard ROV control consoles. The system runs in both English and Spanish. The exhibit features two simulation stations, each with a main joystick to control the ROV and a second smaller controller that operates the ROV’s on-board manipulator.