TRIDENT Power Reel™

Motorized Tether Management for Compact ROV Operations

Remote controlled. Wi-Fi enabled. Integrated with the pilot interface.

TRIDENT Power Reel™ is a compact motorized tether management system designed for portable and rapidly deployable ROV operations.

Unlike a conventional passive tether reel, Power Reel™ integrates powered WIND / UNWIND control directly into the TRIDENT surface control architecture, allowing the operator to manage tether deployment without leaving the primary piloting interface.

The system is designed to operate as part of the same lightweight control ecosystem used by TRIDENT ROV platforms, mobile control stations and VISOR™.

More Than a Reel — The Surface Bridge to TRIDENT AI™

TRIDENT Power Reel™ is not simply a motorized tether reel. It is a surface communication and control interface designed to connect the ROV, the pilot station and the TRIDENT AI Control Box into one compact operational architecture.

The philosophy is simple: keep the ROV small, lightweight and mechanically simple, and keep the GCS equally portable — even down to a standard tablet.

Instead of loading the vehicle with large onboard computers, GPUs and additional processing hardware, the Power Reel™ acts as the bridge between the subsea platform and the TRIDENT AI Control Box, where advanced real-time processing can be performed at the surface.

This distributed architecture allows a compact ROV to access significantly more computational capability without increasing vehicle size, weight, power consumption or thermal load. It follows the same principle behind TRIDENT AI™: combining lightweight onboard processing with higher-performance surface-side computing. https://www.trident-subsea.com/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

ROV → Power Reel™ → AI Control Box → Pilot

The tether carries the vehicle communication path to the surface.Power Reel™ integrates that connection into the surface network and makes it available to the AI Control Box, pilot interface, gamepad and VISOR™.

The result is a seamless AI-powered operational layer while the physical ROV and operator station remain compact.

Advanced Operations Without a Larger ROV

When connected to the TRIDENT AI Control Box, the system can support functions such as:

AMMOD — Automated Man-Made Object DetectionReal-time identification of potentially artificial underwater objects using visual characteristics such as shape, contrast, contours, motion and persistence, helping separate relevant targets from natural seabed clutter.

AITT — AI Target Identification & TrackingOperator-assisted target selection followed by persistent AI tracking, allowing the pilot to maintain awareness of a selected object while manoeuvring the ROV. TRIDENT’s current AI architecture is explicitly designed around detection, target selection and persistent tracking.

Sonar-Assisted Change DetectionWhen a compatible sonar is installed, the surface AI layer can compare repeated observations of the same area to highlight meaningful differences between passes.