The British Antarctic Survey has upgraded the visual control capabilities of the RRS Sir David Attenborough with Datapath's Aetria platform.

The RRS (Royal Research Ship) Sir David Attenborough, operated by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), is one of the world's most advanced polar research vessels. Designed to support scientific work in some of the planet's most challenging environments, the ship features extensive onboard research facilities and a wide range of mission-critical operational systems. As part of a planned technology refresh, BAS sought to modernise its KVM and visual control capabilities with a system capable of seamlessly integrating with the vessel's distributed displays and video walls.

Datapath joined the project at an early stage to assess the requirements and confirm whether Aetria could meet the vessel's specific operational objectives. The process included remote consultations, in-person meetings and demonstrations of the Aetria platform. BAS then entered a collaborative design phase with Datapath's sales, pre-sales and network engineering teams to develop a solution tailored to the vessel's unique technical environment.

Because the ship's UK docking schedule was extremely tight, the initial hardware was purchased and commissioned at BAS headquarters, allowing the teams to become familiar with the system before the vessel docked and the installation was completed. Midwich and Logicalis supported the procurement process, while Datapath trained BAS personnel on commissioning Aetria and provided remote assistance once the equipment had been transferred onboard.

The installation includes 11 Aetria Workstations and uses three VSN Series video wall controller platforms to integrate video and data sources across the vessel's displays. Four VSN300 systems were configured for operator visualisation, while VSNMicro 600 systems were installed on decks 5 and 8, and a VSN V3 system on deck 3, providing greater expansion capacity and a higher number of 4K outputs to support larger and more complex display configurations.

The installation also includes six Image4K graphics cards, 17 IQS4 IP video splitters, 12 VisionSC-A2 capture cards and three ActiveSQX2 encode/decode cards. The system is supported by two Aetria Network Managers with unlimited licences, configured in a high-availability pair to provide additional redundancy. The installation is completed with Aligo RX100 receivers and Aligo TX100 KVM-over-IP transmitters, enabling flexible, centrally managed visual operations.

Datapath was extremely helpful throughout the installation and ensured everything was implemented to a very high standard. We are extremely impressed with the Datapath equipment, and users have found the system to be both robust and very easy to use. It has already supported its first Antarctic science mission, and the ship is now heading deep into the Antarctic ice on its second deployment, where it will be used to control a variety of scientific systems, said Kinzie Orton, HPC Solution Architect at the British Antarctic Survey.

Adam Marsden, Sales Manager at Datapath, added:

It was a pleasure working with the British Antarctic Survey team. They had a very clear understanding of what they wanted to achieve and communicated their requirements effectively, allowing our pre-sales and network engineering teams to design a solution tailored to their needs. Aetria proved to be an ideal fit for the RRS Sir David Attenborough thanks to its flexible configuration and display management capabilities, providing the scalability and number of inputs required for advanced scientific operations. All Datapath hardware was custom-built at our UK headquarters and delivered ready for installation. This flexibility, combined with the security, reliability and ongoing support we provide, enabled us to meet the requirements of this prestigious project.