Wireless teleoperation of HSURF artificial fish in complex paths

In this paper we show the application of the new robotic multi-platform system HSURF to a specific use case of teleoperation, aimed at monitoring and inspection. The HSURF system, consists of 3 different kinds of platforms: floater, sinker and robotic fishes. The collaborative control of the 3 platforms allows a remotely based operator to control the fish in order to visit and inspect several targets underwater following a complex trajectory. A shared autonomy solution shows to be the most suitable, in order to minimize the effect of limited bandwidth and relevant delay intrinsic to acoustic communications. The control architecture is described and preliminary results of the acoustically teleoperated visits of multiple targets in a testing pool are provided.

Underwater Human-Robot and Human-Swarm Interaction: A Review and Perspective

There has been a growing interest in extending the capabilities of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) in subsea missions, particularly in integrating underwater human-robot interaction (UHRI) for control. UHRI and its subfield,underwater gesture recognition (UGR), play a significant role in enhancing diver-robot communication for marine research. This review explores the latest developments in UHRI and examines its promising applications for multi-robot systems. With the developments in UGR, opportunities are presented for underwater robots to work alongside human divers to increase their functionality. Human gestures creates a seamless and safe collaborative environment where divers and robots can interact more efficiently. By highlighting the state-of-the-art in this field, we can potentially encourage advancements in underwater multi-robot system (UMRS) blending the natural communication channels of human-robot interaction with the multi-faceted coordination capabilities of underwater swarms,thus enhancing robustness in complex aquatic environments.

Energy Efficient Training of SNN using Local Zeroth Order Method

Spiking neural networks are becoming increasingly popular for their low energy requirement in real-world tasks with accuracy comparable to the traditional ANNs. SNN training algorithms face the loss of gradient information and non-differentiability due to the Heaviside function in minimizing the model loss over model parameters. To circumvent the problem surrogate method uses a differentiable approximation of the Heaviside in the backward pass, while the forward pass uses the Heaviside as the spiking function. We propose to use the zeroth order technique at the neuron level to resolve this dichotomy and use it within the automatic differentiation tool. As a result, we establish a theoretical connection between the proposed local zeroth-order technique and the existing surrogate methods and vice-versa. The proposed method naturally lends itself to energy-efficient training of SNNs on GPUs. Experimental results with neuromorphic datasets show that such implementation requires less than 1 percent neurons to be active in the backward pass, resulting in a 100x speed-up in the backward computation time. Our method offers better generalization compared to the state-of-the-art energy-efficient technique while maintaining similar efficiency.

Underwater Image Enhancement Using Pre-trained Transformer

The goal of this work is to apply a denoising image transformer to remove the distortion from underwater images and compare it with other similar approaches. Automatic restoration of underwater images plays an important role since it allows to increase the quality of the images, without the need for more expensive equipment. This is a critical example of the important role of the machine learning algorithms to support marine exploration and monitoring, reducing the need for human intervention like the manual processing of the images, thus saving time, effort, and cost. This paper is the first application of the image transformer-based approach called "Pre-Trained Image Processing Transformer" to underwater images. This approach is tested on the UFO-120 dataset, containing 1500 images with the corresponding clean images.

Design of magnetic coupling-based anti-biofouling mechanism for underwater optical sensors

Water monitoring is crucial for environmental monitoring, transportation, energy and telecommunication. One of the main problems in aquatic environmental monitoring is biofouling. The simplest method among the current antifouling strategies is the use of wiper technologies like brushes and wipers which apply mechanical pressure. In designing built-in strategies however, manufacturers usually build the sensor around the biofouling system. The current state-of-the-art is a fully integrated central wiper in the sensor that enables cleaning of all probes mounted on the sonde. Improvements in antifouling strategies lag rapid advancements in sensor technologies such as in miniaturization, specialization, and costs. Hence, improving built-in designs by decreasing size and complexity will decrease maintenance and overall costs. This design is targeted for the EU project Robocoenosis since bio-hybrid systems in this project incorporate living organisms. This technology targets selective proliferation of the organisms which only prevents biofilms on components where they are unwanted. Beyond this, the use of autonomous activation based on image processing may likely be advantageous for minimizing the need for human inspection and maintenance. In addition to Robocoenosis, we also aim at incorporating this design in another project entitled Heterogeneous Swarm of Underwater Autonomous Vehicles where a swarm of heterogeneous underwater robotic fish is being developed.

Nukhada USV: a Robot for Autonomous Surveying and Support to Underwater Operations

The Technology Innovation Institute in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, has recently finished the production and testing of a new unmanned surface vehicle, called Nukhada, specifically designed for autonomous survey, inspection, and support to underwater operations. This manuscript describes the main characteristics of the Nukhada USV, as well as some of the trials conducted during the development.

Underwater Robot Manipulation: Advances, Challenges and Prospective Ventures

Underwater manipulation is one of the most remarkable ongoing research subjects in robotics. \acp{I-AUV} not only have to cope with the technical challenges associated with traditional manipulation tasks but do so while currents and waves perturb the stability of the vehicle, and low-light, turbid water conditions impede perceiving the surroundings. Certainly, the dynamic nature and our limited understanding of the marine environment hinder the autonomous performance of underwater robot manipulation. This manuscript provides a discussion on previous research and the limiting factors that impose on the long-envisioned prospects of autonomous underwater manipulation to finally highlight research directions that have the potential to improve the autonomy capabilities of I-AUV.

Underwater Object Classification and Detection: first results and open challenges

This work reviews the problem of object detection in underwater environments. We analyse and quantify the shortcomings of conventional state-of-the-art (SOTA) algorithms in the computer vision community when applied to this challenging environment, as well as providing insights and general guidelines for future research efforts. First, we assessed if pretraining with the conventional ImageNet is beneficial when the object detector needs to be applied to environments that may be characterised by a different feature distribution. We then investigate whether two-stage detectors yields to better performance with respect to single-stage detectors, in terms of accuracy, intersection of union (IoU), floating operation per second (FLOPS), and inference time. Finally, we assessed the generalisation capability of each model to a lower quality dataset to simulate performance on a real scenario, in which harsher conditions ought to be expected. Our experimental results provide evidence that underwater object detection requires searching for "ad-hoc" architectures than merely training SOTA architectures on new data, and that pretraining is not beneficial.