Innovative Training Network on Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Systems for Marine and Coastal Monitoring

MarineUAS is an EU-funded doctoral program to strategically strengthen research training on Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Systems for Marine and Coastal Monitoring. It is a comprehensive researcher training program across a range of partners in several countries designed to have high impact on the training of individual researchers and their knowledge, skills and their future careers.
MarineUAS has established a unique cooperative environment. It takes benefit of the partners’ extensive and complementary knowledge, field operational experience, and experimental facilities. Marine UAS will build a solid foundation for long-term European excellence and innovation in this field by sharing research infrastructures for field testing and disseminating the research and training outcomes and best practice of MarineUAS into the doctoral schools of the partners, as well as by fostering long-term partnerships and collaboration.
The project starts 1st January 2015

Doctoral training in MarineUAS

MarineUAS will recruit and train doctoral fellows via a specially developed and unique training program designed on the EU Principles for Innovative Doctoral Training.

Expanding on the existing doctoral programs it combines cutting edge training-by-research, high quality supervision, complementary and transferable skills training, secondments, hands-on UAS operator training, cross-disciplinary skillset, and a series of network-wide training events that cover UAS technology, rules and regulations, operations in non-segregated airspace, air traffic management, marine and coastal monitoring and science, and the integration of the air, surface and underwater segments.

Why MarineUAS?

European countries have vast coasts and economic zones that go far into the Atlantic and Arctic oceans and are challenging to monitor and manage. The need to protect and manage the vulnerable natural environment and marine resources in a sustainable manner is an important policy that is manifested in European legislation such as the European Strategy for Marine and Maritime Research.

Moreover, the drive towards activities in more remote locations and harsher environment demands new approaches and technologies. A key enabling technology is the increased use of autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle systems (UAS) instead of manned aircraft and satellite-based remote sensing, oftentimes exploiting strong collaborative links with buoys, ships and autonomous marine vehicles for in-situ observations.

UAS offers potential advantages such as high endurance, reduced cost, increased flexibility and availability, rapid deployment, higher accuracy or resolution, and reduced risk for humans and negative impact on the environment

Learn more at the official website: http://www.itk.ntnu.no/itn/

CADDY (Cognitive Autonomous Diving Buddy) is a collaborative 3 year project funded by the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme FP7, starting from January 2014.

Divers operate in harsh and poorly monitored environments in which the slightest unexpected disturbance, technical malfunction, or lack of attention can have catastrophic consequences. They manoeuvre in complex 3D environments, carry cumbersome equipment, while performing their mission. To overcome these problems, CADDY aims to establish an innovative set-up between a diver and companion autonomous robots (underwater and surface) that exhibit cognitive behaviour through learning, interpreting, and adapting to the diver’s behaviour, physical state, and actions.

 

 

The CADDY project replaces a human buddy diver with an autonomous underwater vehicle and adds a new autonomous surface vehicle to improve monitoring, assistance, and safety of the diver’s mission. The resulting system plays a threefold role similar to those that a human buddy diver should have:

1. The buddy “observer” that continuously monitors the diver;
2. The buddy “slave” that is the diver’s “extended hand” during underwater operations performing tasks such as “do a mosaic of that area”, “take a photo of that” or “illuminate that”; and
3. The buddy “guide” that leads the diver through the underwater environment.

The envisioned threefold functionality will be realized through S&T objectives which are to be achieved within three core research themes:

• The “Seeing the Diver” research theme focuses on 3D reconstruction of the diver model (pose estimation and recognition of hand gestures) through remote and local sensing technologies, thus enabling behaviour interpretation;
• The “Understanding the Diver” theme focuses on adaptive interpretation of the model and physiological measurements of the diver in order to determine the state of the diver; while
• The “Diver-Robot Cooperation and Control” theme is the link that enables diver interaction with underwater vehicles with rich sensory-motor skills, focusing on cooperative control and optimal formation keeping with the diver as an integral part of the formation.

 

Official website: http://www.caddy-fp7.eu/

Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/caddyproject

YouTube Page: https://www.youtube.com/user/caddyproject

This project aimed at the development of advanced robotic tools and techniques for the inspection of critical infrastructures. The cost involved in the construction and maintenance of critical infrastructures (CIs) like bridges, dams, overhead power lines, and industrial chimneys, the consequences of their failure or malfunction, do completely justify the existence of a periodic monitoring programme which helps in the risk evaluation and decision making process relative to the timing of the maintenance, or even repair, works.

A Helicopter for the inspection of CIs was developed and its capabilities fully demonstrated in realistic operational scenarios. The project brings together a multidisciplinary team with well proven expertise in a wide range of key areas that range from the inspection of bridges and dams, using classical tools, aerial inspection of overhead power lines using video surveillance and laser based techniques on board manned helicopters, industrial chimney inspection resorting to infrared cameras, computer vision, robotics, advanced systems for navigation, guidance, and control (NGC), and payload data acquisition and processing.

The team consists of three companies (HAGEN, LABELEC, and BRISA), one university (Instituto Superior Técnico), one technological institute (Instituto de Soldadura e Qualidade), a national laboratory (Laboratório Nacional de Engenharia Civil), and a prestigious research institute from France (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique CNRS, Sophia Antipolis). The team reflects the objective of maximizing the incorporation of national competences at all scientific and technological levels, and simultaneously integrating the know-how of one of the world leader institutes in the area of Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) vehicles for the inspection of CIs.

There are three main research and development components in this project: aerial robotics, inspection of bridges and civil engineering infrastuctures in construction and exploration, and the inspection of energy production and transport infrastructures. The videos found below are a summary of these three components.

Project Partners: Hagen Engenharia, S.A. (PT), ISQ – Instituto de Soldadura e Qualidade (PT), ISR/IST (PT), LABELEC, Electricidade de Portugal EDP (PT), LNEC – Laboratório Nacional de Engenharia Civil (PT)

Funding Institution: Agência de Investimento (AdI).

MORPH (Marine Robotic System of Self-Organising, Logically Linked Physical Nodes) is a four-year project funded by the European Commission that started in 2012.

Groups of autonomous underwater vehicles are required to operate in areas where the visibility is low, obstacles are not known in advance, and a single vehicle would have very limited capabilities. The techniques enabling cooperative behaviour of the MORPH ensemble will pave the way for the development of advanced multi-vehicle systems capable of executing data acquisition and habitat mapping tasks in complex 3D environments (such as canyons and rugged cliff areas) in the presence of reduced visibility and natural unforeseen obstacles.

The institutions participating in the trails are: Atlas Elektronik (Germany), Ifremer (France), Jacobs University Bremen (Germany), IUT – Ilmenau University of Technology (Germany), Computer Vision and Robotics research Institute at the University of Girona (Spain), IMAR – Institute of Marine Research (Portugal), CMRE – NATO STO Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (Italy), IST – Instituto Superior Tecnico (Portugal), and CNR – Istituto di Studio Sui Sistemi Intelligenti per l’Automazione (Italy).

Learn more at the official website: http://morph-project.eu/

Checkout also the Toulon 2013 trials: https://sites.google.com/site/morphtoulon2013/