Abstract
Offshore wind turbine application has been widespread in the last years, with an estimation that in 2030 will reach a total capacity of 234GW. Offshore wind farms introduce advantages in terms of environmental impact (noise, impact on birds, disrupted landscapes) and energy production (34% onshore and 43% offshore). Still, they also introduce scientific challenges in developing methodologies that allow wind farm inspection (preventive maintenance) safety for humans. This paper presents a UAV approach for autonomous inspection of inland windturbine and describes the field tests in Penela, Portugal. From the state-of-the-art available wind turbine inspection, in 2015, we carried out the first autonomous inspection with a UAV. The inspection of wind blades offshore is an ongoing project; therefore, the paper also presents the preliminary results with a simulation environment to validate the 3D LiDAR and the inspection procedure with new challenges effects: floating platform, wind gusts, and unknown initial blade position.

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This paper describes the mission control software used in the LSTS/FEUP underwater vehicles. This software follows the guidelines of the generalized vehicle architecture [1], adapts the original idea to encompass the current application requirements and constitutes a first implementation. The work is focused on the design and implementation of an application that can be easily adapted to different vehicle configurations or even to different vehicles. One of the desired goals was to enhance software reusability and to establish a development environment that allows developers with a minimal knowledge of coding details to upgrade the application. To assist this purpose, a CASE tool, which provides modern software development techniques, was used. A simulation environment was also developed whose purpose is to test the applications and to detect possible malfunctions before they occur during mission execution.

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An automated maneuver control framework for a Remotely Operate Vehicle (ROV) is presented. This framework entails a three-layered control architecture, a principled approach to design and implementation within the architecture, and hybrid systems design techniques. The control architecture is structured according to the principle of composition of vehicle motions from a minimal set of elemental maneuvers that are designed and verified independently. The principled approach is based on distributed hybrid systems techniques, and spans integrated design, simulation and implementation as the same model is used throughout. Hybrid systems control techniques are used to synthesize the elemental maneuvers and to design protocols, which coordinate the execution of elemental maneuvers within a complex maneuver. The architecture is fault-tolerant by design since it uses verified maneuvers. This work is part of the Inspection of Underwater Structures (IES) project whose main objective is the implementation of a ROV-based system for the Inspection of underwater structures.