TRIDENT: A Framework for Autonomous Underwater Intervention

TRIDENT is a STREP project recently approved by the European Commission whose proposal was submitted to the ICT call 4 of the 7th Framework Program. The project proposes a new methodology for multipurpose underwater intervention tasks. To that end, a cooperative team formed with an Autonomous Surface Craft and an Intervention Autonomous Underwater Vehicle will be used. The proposed methodology splits the mission in two stages mainly devoted to survey and intervention tasks, respectively. The project brings together research skills specific to the marine environments in navigation and mapping for underwater robotics, multi-sensory perception, intelligent control architectures, vehiclemanipulator systems and dexterous manipulation. TRIDENT is a three years project and its start is planned by first months of 2010.This work is partially supported by the European Commission through FP7-ICT2009-248497 projec

DexROV: Enabling effective dexterous ROV operations in presence of communication latency

Subsea interventions in the oil & gas industry as well as in other domains such as archaeology or geological surveys are demanding and costly activities for which robotic solutions are often deployed in addition or in substitution to human divers - contributing to risks and costs cutting. The operation of ROVs (Remotely Operated Vehicles) nevertheless requires significant off-shore dedicated manpower to handle and operate the robotic platform and the supporting vessel. In order to reduce the footprint of operations, DexROV proposes to implement and evaluate novel operation paradigms with safer, more cost effective and time efficient ROV operations. As a keystone of the proposed approach, manned support will in a large extent be delocalized within an onshore ROV control center, possibly at a large distance from the actual operations, relying on satellite communications. The proposed scheme also makes provision for advanced dexterous manipulation and semi-autonomous capabilities, leveraging human expertise when deemed useful. The outcomes of the project will be integrated and evaluated in a series of tests and evaluation campaigns, culminating with a realistic deep sea (1,300 meters) trial in the Mediterranean sea

Overview and first year progress of the Widely scalable Mobile Underwater Sonar Technology H2020 project

open20siPubblicazione su rivista di contributo a Convegno -10th IFAC Conference on Control Applications in Marine Systems (CAMS2016)The Widely scalable Mobile Underwater Sonar Technology (WiMUST) project is an H2020 Research and Innovation Action funded by the European Commission. The action's main goal is to develop robotic technologies exploiting Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) for geotechnical surveying and geophysical exploration. The paper briefly describes the project and its state of the art after the first year of activities.openIndiveri, Giovanni; Antonelli, Gianluca; Arrichiello, Filippo; Caffaz, Andrea; Caiti, Andrea; Casalino, Giuseppe; Volpi, Nicola Catenacci; de Jong, Ivan Bielic; De Palma, Daniela; Duarte, Henrique; Gomes, Joao Pedro; Grimsdale, Jonathan; Jesus, Sergio; Kebkal, Konstantin; Kelholt, Elbert; Pascoal, Antonio; Polani, Daniel; Pollini, Lorenzo; Simetti, Enrico; Turetta, AlessioIndiveri, Giovanni; Antonelli, Gianluca; Arrichiello, Filippo; Caffaz, Andrea; Caiti, Andrea; Casalino, Giuseppe; Volpi, Nicola Catenacci; de Jong, Ivan Bielic; De Palma, Daniela; Duarte, Henrique; Gomes, Joao Pedro; Grimsdale, Jonathan; Jesus, Sergio; Kebkal, Konstantin; Kelholt, Elbert; Pascoal, Antonio; Polani, Daniel; Pollini, Lorenzo; Simetti, Enrico; Turetta, Alessi

Widely scalable mobile underwater sonar technology: an overview of the H2020 WiMUST project

The Widely scalable Mobile Underwater Sonar Technology (WIMUST) project is an H2020 Research and Innovation Action funded by European Commission. The project aims at developing a system of cooperative autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) for geotechnical surveying and geophysical exploration. The paper describes the main objectives of the project, given an overview of the methodologies adopted to achieve them, and summarizes the work done in the first year of R&D work

Insight from an Italian Delphi Consensus on EVAR feasibility outside the instruction for use: the SAFE EVAR Study

BACKGROUND: The SAfety and FEasibility of standard EVAR outside the instruction for use (SAFE-EVAR) Study was designed to define the attitude of Italian vascular surgeons towards the use of standard endovascular repair (EVAR) for infrarenal abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) outside the instruction for use (IFU) through a Delphi consensus endorsed by the Italian Society of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery (Societa Italiana di Chirurgia Vascolare ed Endovascolare - SICVE). METHODS: A questionnaire consisting of 26 statements was developed, validated by an 18 -member Advisory Board, and then sent to 600 Italian vascular surgeons. The Delphi process was structured in three subsequent rounds which took place between April and June 2023. In the first two rounds, respondents could indicate one of the following five degrees of agreement: 1) strongly agree; 2) partially agree; 3) neither agree nor disagree; 4) partially disagree; 5) strongly disagree; while in the third round only three different choices were proposed: 1) agree; 2) neither agree nor disagree; 3) disagree. We considered the consensus reached when >70% of respondents agreed on one of the options. After the conclusion of each round, a report describing the percentage distribution of the answers was sent to all the participants. RESULTS: Two -hundred -forty-four (40.6%) Italian Vascular Surgeons agreed to participate the first round of the Delphi Consensus; the second and the third rounds of the Delphi collected 230 responders (94.3% of the first -round responders). Four statements (15.4%) reached a consensus in the first rounds. Among the 22 remaining statements, one more consensus (3.8%) was achieved in the second round. Finally, seven more statements (26.9%) reached a consensus in the simplified last round. Globally, a consensus was reached for almost half of the proposed statements (46.1%). CONCLUSIONS: The relatively low consensus rate obtained in this Delphi seems to confirm the discrepancy between Guideline recommendations and daily clinical practice. The data collected could represent the source for a possible guidelines' revision and the proposal of specific Good Practice Points in all those aspects with only little evidence available

Distributed Dynamic Programming for Adaptive On-line Planning of AUVs Team Mission with Communication Constraints

SUMMARY An algorithm for adaptive on-line planning of environmental exploration missions with a team of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) is proposed. The algorithm has the primary goal of determining an estimate of the sampled environmental quantity with an estimation error below a prescribed threshold. The additional degree of freedom of the algorithm is exploited to spread the team over the exploration area, in order to minimize mission time while, at the same time, the communication connectivity of the team is preserved. A distributed dynamic programming approach is employed in order to satisfy these two conflicting requirements. RIASSUNTO Si propone un algoritmo adattativo per l’esplorazione ambientale mediante un team di veicoli sottomarini autonomi cooperanti. Lo scopo primario dell’algoritmo è quello di determinare una stima della grandezza ambientale misurata con un errore inferiore ad una soglia prefissata. Un grado di libertà addizionale dell’algoritmo è impiegato per distribuire il team sull’area di esplorazione, al fine di minimizzare, per esempio, il tempo totale di missione, mentre, nello stesso tempo, viene preservata la connettività fra i veicoli del team. Per soddisfare contemporaneamente questi due obiettivi contrastanti è proposta una soluzione basata sulla programmazione dinamica distribuita