H2O Robotics

H2O Robotics is an SME company established 2017. The company is located in Zagreb, Croatia. Corporate R&D focuses on marine technology, autonomous vehicles and applications. The first commercial product was Autonomous Surface Vehicle (ASV) H2Omni-X (Figure 1). Overall, the company’s mission after its establishment was to turn H2Omni-X into a marketready product capable of launching a sustainable business in the ASV industry

Towards a state-space geometry of neural responses to natural scenes: A steady-state approach

Our understanding of information processing by the mammalian visual system has come through a variety of techniques ranging from psychophysics and fMRI to single unit recording and EEG. Each technique provides unique insights into the processing framework of the early visual system. Here, we focus on the nature of the information that is carried by steady state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs). To study the information provided by SSVEPs, we presented human participants with a population of natural scenes and measured the relative SSVEP response. Rather than focus on particular features of this signal, we focused on the full state-space of possible responses and investigated how the evoked responses are mapped onto this space. Our results show that it is possible to map the relatively high-dimensional signal carried by SSVEPs onto a 2-dimensional space with little loss. We also show that a simple biologically plausible model can account for a high proportion of the explainable variance (~73%) in that space. Finally, we describe a technique for measuring the mutual information that is available about images from SSVEPs. The techniques introduced here represent a new approach to understanding the nature of the information carried by SSVEPs. Crucially, this approach is general and can provide a means of comparing results across different neural recording methods. Altogether, our study sheds light on the encoding principles of early vision and provides a much needed reference point for understanding subsequent transformations of the early visual response space to deeper knowledge structures that link different visual environments

The role of low-level image features in the affective categorization of rapidly presented scenes

It remains unclear how the visual system is able to extract affective content from complex scenes even with extremely brief (\u3c 100 millisecond) exposures. One possibility, suggested by findings in machine vision, is that low-level features such as unlocalized, two-dimensional (2-D) Fourier spectra can be diagnostic of scene content. To determine whether Fourier image amplitude carries any information about the affective quality of scenes, we first validated the existence of image category differences through a support vector machine (SVM) model that was able to discriminate our intact aversive and neutral images with ~ 70% accuracy using amplitude-only features as inputs. This model allowed us to confirm that scenes belonging to different affective categories could be mathematically distinguished on the basis of amplitude spectra alone. The next question is whether these same features are also exploited by the human visual system. Subsequently, we tested observers’ rapid classification of affective and neutral naturalistic scenes, presented briefly (~33.3 ms) and backward masked with synthetic textures. We tested categorization accuracy across three distinct experimental conditions, using: (i) original images, (ii) images having their amplitude spectra swapped within a single affective image category (e.g., an aversive image whose amplitude spectrum has been swapped with another aversive image) or (iii) images having their amplitude spectra swapped between affective categories (e.g., an aversive image containing the amplitude spectrum of a neutral image). Despite its discriminative potential, the human visual system does not seem to use Fourier amplitude differences as the chief strategy for affectively categorizing scenes at a glance. The contribution of image amplitude to affective categorization is largely dependent on interactions with the phase spectrum, although it is impossible to completely rule out a residual role for unlocalized 2-D amplitude measures

Photoelectrochemical properties of sol–gel obtained titanium oxide

The photoelectrochemical properties of a sol–gel prepared titanium oxide coating applied onto a Ti substrate were investigated. The oxide coating was formed from an inorganic sol thermally treated in air at 350 °C. The coating consisted of agglomerates of narrow size distribution around 100 nm. The photoelectrochemical characteristics were evaluated by investigating the changes in the open circuit potential, current transients and impedance characteristics of a Ti/TiO2 electrode upon illumination by UV light in H2SO4 solution and in the oxidation of benzyl alcohol. The electrode was found to be active for photoelectrochemical reactions in the investigated solutions

Forecasting of the route network of ferry and cruise lines based on simulation and intelligent transport systems

According to statistics, the marine passenger transportation sectors (both cruise lines and ferry lines) show a significant increase of passenger traffic and the intensity of ship routes. But new features of the conditions for passenger traffic growth require the development of new methodological transport models for cruise and ferry networks and new practical forecasting methods. Changes are observed in the fleet composition, mostly in the direction of increased. New approach for forecasting has to be based on the interaction of such systems as ≪city‒sea passenger port‒cruise and ferry lines. This condition now determines new need to describe the principles and forms of organization of maritime ferry networks and changes under the influence of the external environment. The object of the research is the Baltic Sea region and the existing route networks of cruise and ferry lines. Exploring this system, the usage of new mathematical apparatus based on correspondence matrices and agent-based simulation was justified for estimating the workload on transport infrastructure around the passenger port and for the existing ferry or cruise route network. The practical results of new simulation model, on the one hand, justify the need for a comprehensive study of the conditions for the formation of ferry and cruise route networks in changing conditions. On the other hand, these new results could improve the quality of decision-making process in forecasting the route network on the basis of the research of passenger traffic between systems city‒sea terminal-cruise line or ferry line