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\r\n\r\nI’m visiting Girona Uni at the moment as part of my sabbatical term, and \r\nwhilst I’m here I’m trying to expand my horizons a bit academically. SO, this week I attended a workshop on marine robotics, which just happened to be\r\ngoing on whilst I’m here and they let me attend for free. The workshop is for marine robotics, but\r\nit is not just a research conference. Attendees come from 30 research centres,\r\nand 12 companies. Presentations come from 14 EU projects, 4 national projects,\r\n4 companies. On day one, I saw 16 of the talks and then skipped the rest\r\n(including the demo and the dinner) as my folks were visiting and I thought I\r\nshould probably spend some time with them:-)<\/p>\r\n\r\n
Marine robotics is a bit outside my area so it was challenging to sit in and\r\ntry and follow talks that were at the limits of my knowledge. The conference\r\nwas also considerably more applied that many of the conferences I go to –\r\ncompanies and researchers working together much more closely, and much more\r\nclose to product; some of the things presented were research, others were\r\nactual pieces of kit that you can buy. The applications varied too from science\r\nthrough to mining. The EU funding that supports these systems is really\r\ndriving forward innovation in a collaborative way – many of the projects\r\ninvolved tens of institutions, from university research teams through SMEs to\r\nbig companies.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
The keynote came from Lorenzo Brignone, IFREMER lab, which is the French\r\nresearch centre that deals with oceanographic stuff. They have quite a fleet (7\r\nresearch vessels), with manned submersibles, ROVs (Remote operated vehicles),\r\nand AUVs (autonomous underwater vehicles), and a hybrid HROV (AUV\/ROV) which is\r\nthe topic of the keynote. Brignone works in the underwater systems unit, which\r\nis mostly made up of engineering. The key problem is that of working reliably\r\nunderwater near boats which don’t have dynamic positioning – the surface\r\nvehicle might move hundreds of metres, so we need to have an ROV that is more\r\nindependent in order to carry out scientific missions reliably. The design\r\nincludes the whole system, with on-ship electronics, tether, traction, and a\r\nweighted underwater station which includes a fibre-optic link to the HROV. This\r\nlets the hybrid system work with vessles of opportunity, rather than waiting\r\nfor science boats to become ready. Two DVL (doppler velocity log) systems give\r\naccurate underwater location. Final output is a semi autonomous vehicle which\r\ncan be worked by general users (the engineers don’t even have to be on the\r\nboat).<\/p>\r\n\r\n
The next morning talk covered the DEXrov project, which is looking at systems\r\nwhich can control dextrous robots at a distance (hopefully onshore, removing\r\nthe cost of hiring a boat). The aim is to get robots that can interact\r\nunderwater, like divers can. This is controled by an exoskeleton based system –\r\nbasically, the operator wears an arm and hand exoskeleton which the robot then\r\nmimics. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
SWARMS – smart and networking underwater robotics in cooperation meshes. 31\r\npartner consortium, looking at networking tech as well as the robotics tech.\r\nThe project is also developing middleware which will let various heterogenous\r\nsystems (UAVs, ROVs, misssion control, boats) cooperate. Underwater acoustic \r\nnetwork links to wireless on the surface. <\/p>\r\n\r\n
Next up Laurent Mortier from the BRIDGES project, which is a big h2020 project\r\n(19 partners including 6 SMEs) looking at glider technology. These systems are\r\nvery low power underwater vehicles which can cover very long journeys,\r\ncollecting data. Gliders create small changes in buoyancy, using wings to\r\ndrive themselves forwards. This project looks to increase the depth that\r\ngliders can work at, which enables a greater range of scientific questions to\r\nbe answered. The kind of data they look for depends on the payload, which can\r\nbe scientific, or commercial (searching for things like leaks from undersea\r\nhydrocarbons, finding new oilfields).<\/p>\r\n\r\n
Carme Paradeda of Ictineu submarines presented next, on moving from from a\r\nmanned submarine to underwater robots, in a commercial setting. http:\/\/www.ictineu.net\/en\/<\/a> is their website,\r\nand they’ve invested 3 million euros, and more than 100,000 hours of R and D\r\nwent into the creation of their submarine. This is a manned submarine which\r\ninvolved developing new battery technology as part of the project, safer\r\nbatteries for operating at high pressure.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Marc Tormer of SOCIB (a Balaeric islands research centre) also talked about\r\ngliders. Aim is to change the paradigm of ocean observation: from intermittent\r\nmissions on expensive research vessels, to continuous observations from\r\nmultiple systems including gliders.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Graham Edwards from TWI (The Welding Institute) talked about ROBUST H2020\r\nproject. This project addresses seabed mining. Resources they’re looking for\r\nare manganese nodules, which can be found also looking cobalt crusts and\r\nsulphide springs. The system uses laser spectrography on an AUV with 3d\r\nacoustic mapping tech, to try and get away from the problems associated with\r\ndredging.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Pino Casalino, University of Genova (ISME) had the last slot before lunch\r\ntalking about an Italian national project MARIS working towards robot control\r\nsystems for marine intervention. This provided another overview of a big multi\r\nsite project, looking at vision, planning and robot control. I have to admit\r\nthat at this point my attention was beginning to wander.<\/p>\r\n\r\n One group photo and a very pleasant lunch later (I declined the option of a\r\nglass of wine, but did take advantage of the cheesecake and the espresso\r\nmachine) we were back for an afternoon of talks.<\/p>\r\n\r\n The difficult post-lunch slot fell to Bruno Cardeira, from the Instituto\r\nSuperior Técnico (Lisbon) talking about the MEDUSA deep sea AUV. This\r\nproject was joint Portugal-Norway with a lot of partners, looking at deep sea\r\nAUVs, in order to survey remote areas up to 3000m depth. They wanted to do data\r\ncollection and water column profiling, resource exploration, and habitat\r\nmapping, with the aim to open up new sea areas for economic exploitation.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Bruno also presented a hybrid AUV\/ROV\/Diver navigation system, the Fusion ROV<\/a> which is a\r\ncommercial product. This talk had a lot of videos with a loud rock soundtrack, which is one way to blow people out of their post-lunch lull, I guess.<\/p>\r\n\r\n The next talk came from Chiara Petroli, of the University of La Sapienza\r\n(Rome) talking about the SUNRISE project, working on internet of things wrt\r\nunderwater robotics. Underwater networking, in a heterogeneous environment.\r\nLong distance, low cost, energy efficient, secure comms… underwater. Where of\r\ncourse wifi doesn’t really work. Dynamic, adaptive protocols which use largely\r\nacoustic communications have been developed.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Unfortunately by the end of this talk we were already running 15 minutes late\r\n(after just two talks). So the desire for coffee was running high in the\r\naudience, and I think I detected a snore or two.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Andrea Munafo from the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, talking\r\nabout the OCEANIDS project sponsored by the UK’s NERC (natural environment\r\nresearch council). This program is building some new ROVs which will enable\r\nlong range and autonomous missions. One of these ROVs is called Boaty\r\nMcBoatface.<\/p>\r\n\r\n The last talk from this session came from Ronald Thenius, of Uni Graz,\r\ntalking about Subcultron, a learning, self-regulating, self-sustaining\r\nunderwater culture of robots. 7 partners from 6 countries, aiming to monitor\r\nthe environment in the Venice lagoon using the worlds’ largest robot swarm\r\nusing energy autonomy and energy harvesting. Because Venice is big and has a\r\nlot of humans, the cultural aspect is quite important. Players: 5 aPads,\r\n(inspired by lilies, has solar cells, radio comms), 20 aFish (inspired by fish,\r\nmoves around, communicates), and 120 aMussels (inspired by clams, many sensors,\r\npassive movement, NFC, energy harvesting). I liked this talk a lot.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Post coffee break, it was the turn of Nikola Miskovic, from the University\r\nof Zagreb, talking about cooperative AUVs which can communicate with divers\r\nusing hand gestures and tablets. The project (CADDY – autonomous diving buddy)\r\nallowed a number of advances, including the way that the diver could use Google\r\nmaps underwater. “The biggest challenge when you do experiments with humans\r\nand robots is the humans<\/i>“:-)<\/p>\r\n\r\n Jörg Kalwa, ATLAS ELEKTRONIK GMBH spoke on the SeaCat story – from toy\r\nto product. UAV\/ROV hybrid with variable payload. This grew out of various\r\nprecursor systems (experimental and military) – the talk covered the various\r\nrobots which are ancestors of the current ROV. The current incarnation is \r\na commercial robot which does pretty much everything you might want an ROV to\r\ndo, but the price point is pretty high.<\/p>\r\n\r\n The penultimate talk is from Eduardo Silva, ISEP \/ INESC TEC in Porto\r\n(Portugal), talking about underwater mining, in flooded opencast mines. Project\r\nhas a great acronym – Viable Alternative Mine Operating System or VAMOS. Big\r\nproject (17 partners from 9 countries). This project has a bunch of\r\ncollaborating robots including UAVs which look like the many of the others\r\n(torpedo like), and other underwater vehicles which look a lot more like mining\r\nvehicles – tracked tanks, with massive drills and so on. <\/p>\r\n\r\n The day finished with the European Robotics League – a UEFA champions league\r\nfor robotics. Service robots, industry robots, outdoor robots. This talk came\r\nfrom Gabriele Ferri, CMRE. Emergency robotics, combining ground underwater and\r\nair robots cooperating in a disaster response scenario. Mission is to find\r\nmissing workers (mannequins) and bring them an emergency kit, survey the area,\r\nand stem the leak by closing a stop cock.<\/p>\r\n\r\n To be honest, my take home from this workshop is: underwater robots are cool, and brexit is an awesomely stupid idea.<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m visiting Girona Uni at the moment as part of my sabbatical term, and whilst I’m here I’m trying to expand my horizons a bit academically. SO, this week I attended a workshop on marine robotics, which just happened to be going on whilst I’m here and they let me attend for free. The workshop is for marine robotics, but it is not just a research conference. Attendees come from 30 research centres, and 12 companies. Presentations come from 14 EU projects, 4 national projects, 4 companies. On day one, I saw 16 of the talks and then skipped the rest (including the demo andRead More →<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","author-handee","post-1603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-geekiness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hannahdee.wales\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hannahdee.wales\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hannahdee.wales\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hannahdee.wales\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hannahdee.wales\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1603"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.hannahdee.wales\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1604,"href":"https:\/\/www.hannahdee.wales\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1603\/revisions\/1604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hannahdee.wales\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hannahdee.wales\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hannahdee.wales\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/www.hannahdee.wales\/p\/g\/emraspecs.jpg\")
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