30/11/2013 - Events
Genova, 29 novembre 2013. Scuola di Robotica alla FEMAS and AIPAM. Conference “Maritime Emergencies and their Aftermath”
Reading time: 1.5 minutesSchool of Robotics' Emanuele Micheli talks at FEMAS-AIPAM International Conference on "Maritime Emergencies and their Aftermath": Micheli's intervention deals with the New Tools for Assessment and Investigations, Marine Robotics. Genoa, 29 November 2013, 5.10 pm
New Tools for Assessment and Investigations
Emanuele Micheli
School of Robotics
Genoa, 29 November 2013, 5.10 pm
Technological support (ICT devices, Underwater vehicles, robot) in maritime accident investigation and surveyor is of utmost importance.
According to the Directive 2009/18/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 April 2009 establishing the fundamental principles governing the investigation of accidents in the maritime transport sector and amending Council Directive 1999/35/EC and Directive 2002/59/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council:
Conducting safety investigations into casualties and incidents involving seagoing vessels, or other vessels in ports or other restricted maritime areas, in an unbiased manner is of paramount importance in order to effectively establish the circumstances and causes of such casualties or incidents.
Actually, technology-assisted operations are key when:
Harsh, dangerous, unattainable environment conditions make extremely difficult if not impossible a human inspection;
It is essential to investigate the scene of the accident immediately, before nodal evidences were removed, deteriorated, lost;
When evidences are of a nature that can be detected only by sophisticated technology;
When the scene must be kept cleared from any human intervention;
When the same evidences to be moved from the scene of the accident are of a dangerous nature (vehicles carrying an adequate payload to collect and carry evidences).
State of the Art
By now, there are important accounts of interventions by marine robots in accidents scenes.
In 1966, WHOI submersible Alvin located and recovered a nuclear bomb accidentally dropped in the Mediterranean Sea near Spain;
In 1968 submersible Alvin assisted the exploration of the wreckage of RMS Titanic;
In 2002, the French (Ifremer) submarine Nautile made accident explorations on the wreck of the oil tanker Prestige (3500 meters). The Prestige broke apart 250 kilometers from the Spanish coast, shedding an estimated 14,000 tons of oil before sinking beneath the waves.
2012: Costa Concordia accident. Surveyors appointed by Italian Prosecutor Office employed ROVs and AUVs
Marine Technology employable in marine accident surveyors
AUV (Autonomous Underwater Vehicles)
ROV (Remotely Underwater Vehicles)
Manned Submersible vehicles
AUVs (Autonomous Underwater Vehicles)
Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) are programmable, robotic vehicles. According to their shape, they can drift, drive, or glide through the ocean without real-time control by human operators. AUVs can collect data both on the surface or in the deep ocean.
AUVs carry sensors to navigate autonomously and map features of the ocean: compasses, depth sensors, sides can and other sonar’s, magnetometers, thermistors and conductivity probes.
ROVs (Remotely Underwater Vehicles)
A remotely operated underwater vehicle is an underwater robot connected to the surface via umbilical link for communications, energy source and information transfer. Most ROV's are equipped with one, or more, video camera and lights. Additional equipment may include sonar’s, magnetometers, a still camera, a manipulator or cutting arm, water samplers, and instruments that measure water clarity, water temperature, water density, sound velocity, light penetration and temperature. ROV can be also equipped with autonomous robotics arms.
Manned Submersible vehicles
Famous examples of these vehicles are the Bathyscaphe Trieste; Ifremer Nautile; WHOI Alvin; Monterey Bay Deep Flight Aviator; Russian-Finnik Mir.
Siding the collection of data by these underwater vehicles are: Multisensor Data Fusion and Image Processing; Underwater 3d Mapping and Modeling; and SLAM based mosaicking.