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Publications

Publications by CRAS

2023

NEREON - An Underwater Dataset for Monocular Depth Estimation

Authors
Dionisio, JMM; Pereira, PNAAS; Leite, PN; Neves, FS; Tavares, JMRS; Pinto, AM;

Publication
OCEANS 2023 - LIMERICK

Abstract
Structures associated with offshore wind energy production require an arduous and cyclical inspection and maintenance (O&M) procedure. Moreover, the harsh challenges introduced by sub-sea phenomena hamper visibility, considerably affecting underwater missions. The lack of quality 3D information within these environments hinders the applicability of autonomous solutions in close-range navigation, fault inspection and intervention tasks since these have a very poor perception of the surrounding space. Deep learning techniques are widely used to solve these challenges in aerial scenarios. The developments in this subject are limited regarding underwater environments due to the lack of publicly disseminated underwater information. This article presents a new underwater dataset: NEREON, containing both 2D and 3D data gathered within real underwater environments at the ATLANTIS Coastal Test Centre. This dataset is adequate for monocular depth estimation tasks, which can provide useful information during O&M missions. With this in mind, a benchmark comparing different deep learning approaches in the literature was conducted and presented along with the NEREON dataset.

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

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.

2023

Temporal variability of gamma radiation and aerosol concentration over the North Atlantic ocean

Authors
Dias, N; Amaral, G; Almeida, C; Ferreira, A; Camilo, A; Silva, E; Barbosa, S;

Publication

Abstract
<p>Gamma radiation measured over the ocean is mainly due to airborne radionuclides, as gamma emission by radon degassing from the ocean is negligible. Airborne gamma-emitting elements include radon progeny (Pb-2114, Bi-214, Pb-210) and cosmogenic radionuclides such as Be-7. Radon progeny attaches readily to aerosols, thus the fate of gamma-emitting radon progeny, after its formation by radioactive decay from radon, is expected to be closely linked to that of aerosols.</p> <p>Gamma radiation measurements over the Atlantic Ocean were made on board the ship-rigged sailing ship NRP Sagres in the framework of project SAIL (Space-Atmosphere-Ocean Interactions in the marine boundary Layer). The measurements were performed continuously with a NaI(Tl) scintillator counting all gamma rays from 475 keV to 3 MeV.  </p> <p>The counts from the sensor were recorded every 1 second into a computer system which had his time reference corrected by a GNSS pulse per second (PPS) signal. The GNSS was also used to precisely position the ship. The measurements were performed over the Atlantic ocean from January to May 2020, along the ship’s round trip from Lisboa - Cape Verde – Rio de Janeiro – Buenos Aires – Cape Town – Cape Verde - Lisboa.</p> <p>The results show that the gamma radiation time series displays considerable higher counts and larger variability in January compared to the remaining period. Reanalysis data also indicate higher aerosol concentration. This work investigates in detail the association between the temporal evolution of the gamma radiation measurements obtained from the SAIL campaign over the Atlantic Ocean and co-located total aerosol concentration at 550 nm obtained every 3 hours from EAC4(ECMWF Atmospheric Composition Reanalysis 4) data.</p>

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