This paper describes the PISCES system, an integrated approach for fully autonomous mapping of large areas of the ocean in deep waters. A deep water AUV will use an acoustic navigation system to compute is position with bounded error. The range limitation will be overcome by a moving baseline scheme, with the acoustic sources installed in robotic surface vessels with previously combined trajectories. In order to save power, all systems will have synchronized clocks and implement the One Way Travel Time scheme. The mapping system will be a combination of an off-the-shelf MBES with a new long range bathymetry system, with a source on a moving surface vessel and the receivers on board the AUV. The system is being prepared to participate in round one of the XPRIZE challenge.
To improve safety and efficiency of land vehicles, such as cars and trucks, frequent tire inspections are necessary. Regular checks of tire tread depths help prevent accidents and enhance fuel efficiency. However, traditional methods for estimating tread depth, like depth gauges, can be both time-consuming and imprecise, especially for vehicles with multiple tires. In this paper, we propose a novel portable embedded Digital Processing System (DPS) device that utilizes linear image sensors (CCDs) and active illumination to estimate the depths of all tire treads at once. The device features a microcontroller that configures the linear sensor's parameters and collects its readings. The microcontroller communicates with an Android device via a serial connection to transfer the data for processing. Additionally, the Android application offers visual feedback to the user, enabling them to conduct tire inspections on vehicles. Both the Printed Circuit Board (PCB) and the device case are designed in our laboratory, with the case being 3D printed. The proposed device achieves an error of 0.115 millimeters in tread depth estimation and consumes only 22.15% of the time required by the traditional depth gauge to estimate all the tread depths of a tire. The integration of the proposed device into tire manufacturing companies can significantly enhance the efficiency of tread inspection processes. This innovation not only improves overall quality control and productivity in tire inspection but also offers substantial benefits in both scientific and economic contexts.
This paper describes a robotic system to detect and estimate the volume of sediments in underwater wall corners, in scenarios with zero visibility. All detection and positioning is based on data from a scanning sonar. The main idea is to scan the walls and the bottom of the structure to detect the corner, and then use data obtained in the direction of the corner to estimate the presence of sediment accumulation and its volume. Our approach implements an image segmentation to extract range from the surfaces of interest. The resulting data is then employed for relative localization and estimate of the sediment accumulation. The paper provides information about the methodologies developed and data from practical experiments.
This paper presents the design of low cost, small autonomous surface vehicle for missions in the coastal waters and specifically for the challenging surf zone. The main objective of the vehicle design described in this paper is to address both the capability of operation at sea in relative challenging conditions and maintain a very low set of operational requirements (ease of deployment). This vehicle provides a first step towards being able to perform general purpose missions (such as data gathering or patrolling) and to at least in a relatively short distances to be able to be used in rescue operations (with very low handling requirements) such as carrying support to humans on the water. The USV is based on a commercially available fiber glass hull, it uses a directional waterjet powered by an electrical brushless motor for propulsion, thus without any protruding propeller reducing danger in rescue operations. Its small dimensions (1.5 m length) and weight allow versatility and ease of deployment. The vehicle design is described in this paper both from a hardware and software point of view. A characterization of the vehicle in terms of energy consumption and performance is provided both from test tank and operational scenario tests. An example application in search and rescue is also presented and discussed with the integration of this vehicle in the European ICARUS (7th framework) research project addressing the development and integration of robotic tools for large scale search and rescue operations.
Control theory has been applied to several domains where practical considerations are relevant. Robotics is a notable example of this. In most cases, mobile robotic systems are governed such that their behavior obeys to a defined motion. However, during their operations, it is conceivable that faults could occur. Indeed, this assumption has to be made in order to predict a possible malfunction and to take an appropriate action according to the fault, improving the robustness and the reliability of the system. This work tackles the problem of fault detection, identification and automatic reconfiguration of an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV). Although our emphasis will be directed to an AUV, the methods and the tools that are employed in this chapter can be easily extended to other engineering problems beyond robotics. In this work, we will consider the MARES (Modular Autonomous Robot for Environment Sampling) (Fig. 1) Cruz & Matos (2008); Matos & Cruz (2009), a small-sized (1.5 meters long), torpedo shaped AUV weighting 32 kg, able to move at constant velocities up to 2.5 m/s. Its four thrusters provide four degrees of freedom (DOF), namely surge, heave, pitch and yaw. One of its main particularities is the capability to dive independently of the forward motion. The vertical through-hull thrusters provide heave and pitch controllability, while the horizontal ones ensure the surge and the yaw DOFs. The heave and pitch DOFs make the vertical plane control redundant when the vehicle is moving with surge velocities different from zero. In other words, the vehicle remains controllable if only one of these two DOFs is available. Such characteristic will be explored along this chapter in which the control of the nonlinear dynamics of the AUV Ferreira, Matos, Cruz & Pinto (2010); Fossen (1994) constitutes a challenging problem. By taking advantage of the distribution of the actuators on the vehicle, it is possible to decouple the horizontal and the vertical motion. A common approach in such systems is to consider reduced models in order to simplify the analysis and the derivation of the control law (see Ferreira, Matos, Cruz & Pinto (2010); Teixeira et al. (2010) or Fossen (1994), for example). In general, for topedo-shaped vehicles, coupling effects due to composed motions (e.g., simultaneous sway and heavemotions) are clearly smaller than the self effects of decomposedmotion (e.g., effect of the heavemotion on the heave dynamics) and can therefore be considered disturbances in the reduced model in which they are not included. Thus, a reduced model will be considered to deal with the vertical motion taking surge, heave and pitch rate as state components. In order to make the detection and identification of possible faults, we present a method based on process monitoring by estimating relevant state variables of the system. See Frank & Ding (1997) for an overview on several techniques andZhang & Jiang (2002) for an application to a particular linear system. Wu et al. (2000) have developed an algorithm based on the two-stage 3
One way to mitigate the high costs of doing science or business at sea is to create technological infrastructures possessing all the skills and resources needed for successful maritime operations, and make those capabilities and skills available to the external entities requiring them. By doing so, the individual economic and scientific agents can be spared the enormous effort of creating and maintaining their own, particular set of equivalent capabilities, thus drastically lowering their initial operating costs. In addition to cost savings, operating based on fully-fledged, shared infrastructures not only allows the use of more advanced scientific equipment and highly skilled personnel, but it also enables the business teams (be it industry or research) to focus on their goals, rather than on equipment, logistics, and support. This paper will describe the TEC4SEA infrastructure, created precisely to operate as described. This infrastructure has been under implementation in the last few years, and has now entered its operational phase. This paper will describe it, present its current portfolio of services, and discuss the most relevant assets and facilities that have been recently acquired, so that the research and industrial communities requiring the use of such assets can fully evaluate their adequacy for their own purposes and projects.
This paper describes the interaction between the kinematic model of the AUV MARES, and the measurement and observation of the environment through images obtained with the sonar use. Three types of sonar are discussed in this paper; there are forward-look, side scan and multibeam. But the sonar used to develop this work was the side scan sonar. The type of observations and characteristics of the environment provided by the sonar are described here. The method, which connects the sensory part of the vehicle with the observations of the sonar, was the Kalman filter (EKF). In this paper, are presented two simulations of filters for two different characteristics. Both filters estimate the characteristics of natural landmarks, creating an environment map, but both of them consider different states of the vehicle. Results of the simulation are obtained. The features that are considered are an underwater pipe on the floor and a wall. It also generated a control for the vehicle that provides the capacity to move along the feature/landmark from a reference distance.
Today, in our landscape perception exists a gap that needs to be fulfilled. It's important to increase the coverage, temporal and spatial resolution in order to cover this gap, as well as reduce costs with human resources that usually take this kind of tasks. Unmanned Autonomous vehicles with their inherent autonomy and reduced needs of human and communication resources, can provide additional capabilities and a new innovative solution to this problem This paper presents and describes the participation of ICARUS Team at euRathlon 2015 and the importance of this type of events performed with multiple unnamed systems.
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