2024
Autores
Guedes, PA; Silva, HM; Wang, S; Martins, A; Almeida, J; Silva, E;
Publicação
JOURNAL OF MARINE SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
Abstract
This paper introduces an advanced acoustic imaging system leveraging multibeam water column data at various frequencies to detect and classify marine litter. This study encompasses (i) the acquisition of test tank data for diverse types of marine litter at multiple acoustic frequencies; (ii) the creation of a comprehensive acoustic image dataset with meticulous labelling and formatting; (iii) the implementation of sophisticated classification algorithms, namely support vector machine (SVM) and convolutional neural network (CNN), alongside cutting-edge detection algorithms based on transfer learning, including single-shot multibox detector (SSD) and You Only Look once (YOLO), specifically YOLOv8. The findings reveal discrimination between different classes of marine litter across the implemented algorithms for both detection and classification. Furthermore, cross-frequency studies were conducted to assess model generalisation, evaluating the performance of models trained on one acoustic frequency when tested with acoustic images based on different frequencies. This approach underscores the potential of multibeam data in the detection and classification of marine litter in the water column, paving the way for developing novel research methods in real-life environments.
2023
Autores
Carneiro, A; Silva, G; Marques, P; Marques, A; Dias, N; Almeida, C; Magalhaes, C; Martins, A;
Publicação
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.
2025
Autores
Loureiro, G; Dias, A; Almeida, J; Martins, A; Silva, E;
Publicação
JOURNAL OF MARINE SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
Abstract
Climate change has led to the need to transition to clean technologies, which depend on an number of critical metals. These metals, such as nickel, lithium, and manganese, are essential for developing batteries. However, the scarcity of these elements and the risks of disruptions to their supply chain have increased interest in exploiting resources on the deep seabed, particularly polymetallic nodules. As the identification of these nodules must be efficient to minimize disturbance to the marine ecosystem, deep learning techniques have emerged as a potential solution. Traditional deep learning methods are based on the use of convolutional layers to extract features, while recent architectures, such as transformer-based architectures, use self-attention mechanisms to obtain global context. This paper evaluates the performance of representative models from both categories across three tasks: detection, object segmentation, and semantic segmentation. The initial results suggest that transformer-based methods perform better in most evaluation metrics, but at the cost of higher computational resources. Furthermore, recent versions of You Only Look Once (YOLO) have obtained competitive results in terms of mean average precision.
2023
Autores
Zajzon, N; Topa, BA; Papp, RZ; Aaltonen, J; Almeida, JM; Almeida, C; Martins, A; Bodó, B; Henley, S; Pinto, MT; Zibret, G;
Publicação
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.
The access to the final selection minute is only available to applicants.
Please check the confirmation e-mail of your application to obtain the access code.