Uncrewed Surface Vehicles (USV): from survey to shipping

Autonomy and unmanned systems have evolved signifcantly in recent decades, becoming a key routine component for various sectors and domains as an intrinsic sign of their improvement, the ocean not being an exception. This paper shows the transition from the research concept to the commercial product and related services for Uncrewed Surface Vehicles (USV). Note that it has not always been easy in most cases due to limitations on the technology, business, and policy framework sides. An overview of current trends in USV technology looking for a baseline to understand the sector where some experiences of the authors are shown in this work. The analysis presented shows a multidisciplinary approach to the feld. USV’s capabilities and applications today include a wide range of operations and services aimed at meeting the specifc needs of the maritime sector. This important consideration for USV has yet to be fully addressed, but progress is being made to best contribute, among others, to the development and consolidation of the European Research Infrastructure (RI) on Marine Robotics (EUMR) where USV should play a key role.Peer Reviewe

New problems of optimal path coordination for multi-vehicle systems

New problems of optimal path coordination for multiple vehicles are introduced, formulated and solved in the framework of dynamic optimization. The novelty of these problems arises in several ways. The cost function and the dynamics include non-trivial dependencies, modeled through existential quantification over groups of vehicles - this leads to non-Lipschitz behavior and to non-standard optimal control problems. There are consumable resources, modeled with the help of integral constraints - the structure of the constraints suggested new strategies for optimal cooperation which outperform the results obtained with standard formulations with state-constraints. Our formulation uses the structure of the problem to decouple the overall optimization into simpler coupled problems in lower-dimensional spaces. This is expressed in the form of the solution, which is encoded as the composition of value functions in lower-dimensional spaces

Water Take-off and Landing Hybrid Copter approach for Maritime CONOPs

With the rise in the use of multi-vehicles teams, for maritime operations, new challenges and opportunities arise regarding the complexity and logistics of these scenarios. One way to cope with said complexity is to imbue some of these systems with the versatility of operating in more than one physical medium (air/water/land) during its normal mission cycle, maximizing their possible mission roles. The ability of having a vehicle which can operate both in the air and on the water can further expand and facilitate maritime operations by allowing new sampling, deployment and even communication scenarios. This work follows the iterations of a specific vehicle concept, through its various phases, and tracks the developments and challenges necessary to adapt a Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) to become capable of water take-off & landing, and explores its applicability as a viable operational mobile communication gateway for underwater and surface assets

Relatório da Comissão Estratégica dos Oceanos : Parte II, Análise e Propostas

O presente documento que encerra a Parte II do Relatório não é um documento exaustivosobre todos os assuntos relativos ao Oceano. Apesar de constituir um repositório deinformação, e mesmo de conhecimento de referência para a gestão dos assuntos do Oceano,o seu conteúdo encontra-se em aberto e em permanente evolução, cabendo no futuroa outros mecanismos ou entidades actualizar e continuar a trabalhar esta "matéria-prima".O conteúdo da presente Parte II do Relatório constitui ele próprio também o resultado decompromissos procurados e alcançados entre os membros da Comissão e do ConselhoConsultivo.Ele exprime, assim, a opinião colectiva dos membros da Comissão e do ConselhoConsultivo. Não implica necessariamente a subscrição por todos os membros relativamenteaos pormenores de cada uma das formulações nele contidas

Integrated maneuver and control design for ROV operations

The integrated maneuver and control structures for a Remotely Operated Vehicle are presented in the context of the developments of "IES - Inspection of Underwater Structures" project. The project concerns the design and implementation of an advanced low cost system for the inspection of underwater structures based on a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV). First, the sub-systems of the IES system are described. Second, an example of a mission is outlined. Third, the control architecture is briefly sketched and formalized. Fourth, the design of the regulation and tracking controllers for this architecture are discussed. The design uses a non-linear Dynamic Surface Controller (DSC). This controller is coupled with a trajectory generation system for optimal performance. The ROV model is differentially flat under mild assumptions. The trajectory generation system uses this property to produce optimal trajectories. Finally, simulation runs of DSC and PID are compared in light of model parameters uncertainty. Extensions of the work are discussed as conclusions

Optimização dinâmica para planeamento de movimento e controlo de veículos autónomos

Este artigo aborda o problema da geração de trajectórias em tempo-realpara veículos autónomos e semi-autónomos. Neste trabalho, geração de trajetóriasrefere-se ao planeamento do movimento do veículo, parametrizado no tempo, e aocálculo da referência para a entrada do sistema para que esse planeamento sejaconcretizado. Tempo-real, neste contexto, significa que o cálculo da trajectória é realizado suficientemente rápido de modo que o controlo do veículo em malhafechada possa ser efectuado por este processo. Este trabalho foi desenvolvidotendo em vista a sua utilização na geração de trajectórias em tempo real para umveículo autónomo subaquático existente no Laboratório de Sistemas e TecnologiaSubaquática da Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto