Sperry Marine Receives Approval for VDR

Northrop Grumman Corporation been awarded type approval from the Italian classification society Registro Italiano Navale (RINA) for its Sperry Marine VoyageMaster II Simplified Voyage Data Recorder (S-VDR). The RINA type approval certifies that the Sperry Marine S-VDR meets the International Maritime Organization (IMO) carriage requirements and performance standards for mandatory “black box” recording devices to be installed on ocean-going ships. Similar to the cockpit recorders on aircraft, the S-VDR provides a permanent record of data from ship sensors and recordings of voice communications from the ship’s bridge for use in incident investigations. The S-VDR is a simplified version of shipboard voyage data recorders (VDRs), which are required on all new ships constructed since 2002. The S-VDR standard was created by the IMO for products to be retrofitted on existing cargo ships, many of which were built with older, analog systems and sensors that cannot easily be interfaced with the VDR. Sperry Marine’s VoyageMaster II S-VDR has also received similar type approval from the German certification authority Bundesamt für Seeschiffahrt & Hydrographie.