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Publications

Publications by CRAS

2023

Shore Control Centre for Multi-Domain Heterogeneous Robotic Vehicles

Authors
Neves, FS; Campos, HJ; Campos, DF; Claro, RM; Almeida, PN; Marques, JV; Pinto, AM;

Publication
OCEANS 2023 - LIMERICK

Abstract
Given the increased interest in offshore wind energy, there is a greater need for advancements in operation and maintenance technology. As a result, robotic solutions are required to avoid human risky behavior and reduce associated operational costs. In order to accommodate the need for inspecting multiple domains, multiple robotic vehicles are utilized, which requires the deployment of control stations that can effectively monitor, facilitate communication among different vehicles, and ensure successful completion of the overall mission. A shore control centre (SCC) is a communication software infrastructure capable of monitoring, localizing and planning missions for a group of multi-domain heterogeneous robots within a local network. This paper proposes an SCC as: (i) an active monitor by continuously observing the local behaviour of each robot and the global progress of the mission and its safety; (ii) a mission planner that provides and supervises its execution while constantly checking for critical failures and intervening in the case of unexpected events. Also, The control centre is able to connect to multiple vehicles from various domains and monitor real-time data. Accordingly, validation procedures were carried out in real conditions.

2023

An Inverse Kinematics Approach for the Analysis and Active Control of a Four-UPR Motion-Compensated Platform for UAV-ASV Cooperation

Authors
Pereira, P; Campilho, R; Pinto, A;

Publication
MACHINES

Abstract
In the present day, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology is being used for a multitude of inspection operations, including those in offshore structures such as wind-farms. Due to the distance of these structures to the coast, drones need to be carried to these structures via ship. To achieve a completely autonomous operation, the UAV can greatly benefit from an autonomous surface vehicle (ASV) to transport the UAV to the operation location and coordinate a successful landing between the two. This work presents the concept of a four-link parallel platform to perform wave-motion synchronization to facilitate UAV landings. The parallel platform consists of two base floaters connected with rigid rods, linked by linear actuators to a top mobile platform for the landing of a UAV. Using an inverse kinematics approach, a study of the position of the cylinders for greater range of motion and a workspace analysis is achieved. The platform makes use of a feedback controller to reduce the total motion of the landing platform. Using the robotic operating system (ROS) and Gazebo to emulate wave motions and represent the physical model and actuator system, the platform control system was successfully validated.

2023

Biosampler IS-ABS: eDNAuto filtration unit for vehicle integration (v2.0)

Authors
Carneiro, A; Silva, G; Marques, P; Marques, A; Dias, N; Almeida, C; Magalhaes, C; Martins, A;

Publication
OCEANS 2023 - LIMERICK

Abstract
Water bodies are complex and interconnected systems that play a crucial role in both our environment and our economy. Studying these water bodies is therefore essential but collecting and analyzing water samples can be challenging, particularly when dealing with large volumes of water. This article presents a system capable of autonomously filtering large volumes of water through standard marine biology filters and preserving them to later be analyzed. The system's preliminary results are presented in this paper.

2023

Underwater measurements with UX robots; a new and available tool developed by UNEXUP

Authors
Zajzon, N; Topa, BA; Papp, RZ; Aaltonen, J; Almeida, JM; Almeida, C; Martins, A; Bodó, B; Henley, S; Pinto, MT; Zibret, G;

Publication
EUROPEAN GEOSCIENCES UNION GENERAL ASSEMBLY 2023, EGU DIVISION ENERGY, RESOURCES & ENVIRONMENT, ERE

Abstract
The UNEXMIN (Horizon 2020) and UNEXUP (EIT RawMaterials) projects developed a novel technology to send robots and even autonomously deliver optical images, 3D maps and other georeferenced scientific data from flooded underground environments, like abandoned mines, caves or wells. The concept turned into a market ready solution in seven years, where the last few years of field trials of the development beautifully demonstrating the technology's premier capabilities. Here in this paper, we focus on the wide variety of environments, circumstances and measurements where the UNEXMIN technology can be the best solution or the only solution to deliver certain research or engineering data. These are obtained from both simple and complex environments like different mines and caves, small and large cavities, long and tight tunnels and shafts, different visibility conditions, even different densities of the liquid medium where UX robots operated.

2023

Automatic Detection of Corrosion in Large-Scale Industrial Buildings Based on Artificial Intelligence and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Authors
Lemos, R; Cabral, R; Ribeiro, D; Santos, R; Alves, V; Dias, A;

Publication
APPLIED SCIENCES-BASEL

Abstract
In recent years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) provided essential tools to enhance the productivity of activities related to civil engineering, particularly in design, construction, and maintenance. In this framework, the present work proposes a novel AI computer vision methodology for automatically identifying the corrosion phenomenon on roofing systems of large-scale industrial buildings. The proposed method can be incorporated into computational packages for easier integration by the industry to enhance the inspection activities' performance. For this purpose, a dedicated image database with more than 8k high-resolution aerial images was developed for supervised training. An Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) was used to acquire remote georeferenced images safely and efficiently. The corrosion anomalies were manually annotated using a segmentation strategy summing up 18,381 instances. These anomalies were identified through instance segmentation using the Mask based Region-Convolution Neural Network (Mask R-CNN) framework adjusted to the created dataset. Some adjustments were performed to enhance the performance of the classification model, particularly defining an adequate input image size, data augmentation strategy, Intersection over a Union (IoU) threshold during training, and type of backbone network. The inferences show promising results, with correct detections even under complex backgrounds, poor illumination conditions, and instances of significantly reduced dimensions. Furthermore, in scenarios without a roofing system, the model proved reliable, not producing any false positive occurrences. The best model achieved metrics' values equal to 65.1% for the bounding box detection Average Precision (AP) and 59.2% for the mask AP, considering an IoU of 50%. Regarding classification metrics, the precision and recall were equal to 85.8% and 84.0%, respectively. The developed methodology proved to be extremely valuable for guiding infrastructure managers in taking physically informed decisions based on the real assets condition.

2023

Automatic characterisation of Dansgaard-Oeschger events in palaeoclimate ice records

Authors
Barbosa, S; Silva, ME; Dias, N; Rousseau, D;

Publication

Abstract
Greenland ice core records display abrupt transitions, designated as Dansgaard-Oeschger (DO) events, characterised by episodes of rapid warming (typically decades) followed by a slower cooling. The identification of abrupt transitions is hindered by the typical low resolution and small size of paleoclimate records, and their significant temporal variability. Furthermore, the amplitude and duration of the DO events varies substantially along the last glacial period, which further hinders the objective identification of abrupt transitions from ice core records Automatic, purely data-driven methods, have the potential to foster the identification of abrupt transitions in palaeoclimate time series in an objective way, complementing the traditional identification of transitions by visual inspection of the time series.In this study we apply an algorithmic time series method, the Matrix Profile approach, to the analysis of the NGRIP Greenland ice core record, focusing on:- the ability of the method to retrieve in an automatic way abrupt transitions, by comparing the anomalies identified by the matrix profile method with the expert-based identification of DO events;- the characterisation of DO events, by classifying DO events in terms of shape and identifying events with similar warming/cooling temporal patternThe results for the NGRIP time series show that the matrix profile approach struggles to retrieve all the abrupt transitions that are identified by experts as DO events, the main limitation arising from the diversity in length of DO events and the method’s dependence on fixed-size sub-sequences within the time series. However, the matrix profile method is able to characterise the similarity of shape patterns between DO events in an objective and consistent way.

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