By: Jeff Green and Kathryn Lear (authors/editors)
This Sep/Oct, Canada’s Memorial University of Newfoundland hosted the 2020 IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society (IEEE OES) Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) Symposium for the first time.
The biennial international conference was scheduled to be held in person in St. John’s – the historic capital city in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador – but the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic forced organizers to develop the event as a virtual symposium. The event took place online from Sept. 30-Oct. 3.
The conference was organized by a committee consisting of representatives from Memorial University, its Marine Institute, the National Research Council of Canada and industry.
Thanks to a strong partnership with Memorial’s Conference and Event Services unit, the committee successfully delivered an innovative conference program.
Premier event
Dr. Neil Bose, vice-president (research) at Memorial University, was the organizing committee chair. He noted IEEE OES is renowned around the world as an organizer of this premier event that brings together experts from industry, government and academia from all over the globe.
“Early this year, we decided to plan for a remote online conference. The key was how to make it work,” Dr. Bose noted.
“We planned presentations in a time-zone friendly asynchronous mode so it worked around the world. And we also planned networking, social events, exhibitor’s spaces, workshops, cultural events and more.”
Strong representation
The 2020 symposium attracted more than 100 registrants and 70 extended abstracts and full papers from 20 countries.
Paper topics included leading edge AUV developments in navigation; design; control; sensor design and data fusion; autonomy; mission planning; applications; multi-vehicle systems and open source robotics. There were also three submissions for a student poster competition.
The primary sponsor for the symposium was Kongsberg Maritime. Richard Mills, vice-president, marine robotics sales at Kongsberg Maritime, told Memorial University’s Gazette that as an industry leader, they felt it was important to support the research and academic community as they work to identify future challenges.
“We are keen to see new technologies and capabilities, but also how today’s systems are being used in challenging environments. AUV2020 is very much a learning opportunity for us and we look forward to renewing old friendships and making new ones.”
Opportunities for advancement
Dr. Ting Zou, assistant professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science at Memorial, was the technical symposium chair.
Dr. Zou’s research focuses on the development of robotic technology for multiple areas, including underwater robots like AUVs, soft inspection robots to improve current inspection techniques for complex structures and intelligent robots based on AI methodology that can work independently without human intervention.
“The control of AUV and other underwater vehicles, like biologically inspired underwater robots, is one of my research focuses,” Dr. Zou told Memorial’s Gazette.
“I will take this opportunity to investigate the state-of-the-art in AUV control techniques to work in complex underwater environments.”
Gina Millar, research laboratory co-ordinator with Memorial’s Autonomous Ocean Systems Centre and symposium committee member, has worked in the water robotics industry for more than 15 years.
Ms. Millar says the majority of her time is spent working with the university’s International Submarine Engineering Explorer AUV, a deep-diving AUV rated for a 3,000 metre depth.
“The people I’m working with currently are conducting oil spill research. Some of their biggest challenges right now are their levels of autonomy with the vehicle,” Ms. Millar said in an interview with Memorial’s Gazette.
“Basically, we want the vehicle to make higher levels of thought processes and decisions. I think it is something that is important for the industry in general.”
“The AUV world is a small one, so we all have similar problems and it’s nice to get together with other people and do some brainstorming,” she added.
Special honours
During the 2020 symposium, several awards were presented to members of the international AUV community.
Rising Star recipients
There were two recipients of the Rising Star Award.
This award is to “Honor mid-career researchers and faculty that have made a demonstrable difference to our field and have the potential of continuing on the stellar track that they are following.”
The 2020 winners of the Rising Star Awards were: Dr Michael Jakuba, WHOI, USA and Prof Martin Ludvigsen, NTNU, Norway.
Dr. Jakuba completed his PhD degree in the MIT WHOI Joint Program in 2007 in the area of hydrothermal plume detection work that was later applied to detecting and characterizing the plume from the Deepwater Horizon Oil spill.
He went on to do a postdoc at the University of Sydney before returning to WHOI where he is currently a Senior Engineer.
He has been at the forefront of AUV design and deployments and been on a large number of oceanographic research cruises with various autonomous vehicles including the ABE and Sentry AUVs, the HROV Nereus, SeaBED-class AUVs, as well as Iver2 and REMUS AUVs.
Some of his notable achievements include the design and build of the Clio biogeochemical AUV Sampler and being the lead on the HROV Nereid Under-Ice.
Martin Ludvigsen is Professor and manager of the Applied Underwater Robotics Laboratory (AUR-Lab) at the Department of Marine Technology, NTNU where he teaches the course Underwater Engineering in Trondheim, Norway.
Over the course of his career he has worked on a variety of projects including on Marine Archaeology – notably on the Ormen Lange project, on imaging with ROVs, AUVs and Surface Vehicles and in pioneering work in the Arctic environment in Svalbard on diurnal phytoplankton migration in the polar night. He is also a co-founder and CTO of the highly successful Blueye Robotics.
IEEE OES AUV Lifetime Achievement Award
This award is presented to the person who has significant achievement and contribution on AUV technology in their lifetime.
The IEEE OES AUV Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Prof. António Manuel Pascoal, a Professor at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) in Lisbon, Portugal, and the head of the DSOR – Dynamical Systems and Ocean Robotics Laboratory at IST.
António Pascoal has been working on Navigation, Guidance, and Control of Autonomous Vehicles, and Networked Control and Estimation at IST, Lisbon, Portugal, since the early 90’s. He obtained his PhD in Control Science from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, in 1987.
He pioneered the development of ocean robotics in Europe and is one of the most influential professors in ocean robotics in the world.
He was one of the driving forces behind the development of the MARIUS AUV in one of the first European projects on ocean robotics. With his team, he has successfully designed the Caravela AUV, the Delfim class ASVs, the Maia AUV and the Autonomous Vertical Profiler (both developed in cooperation with his collaborators at the National Institute of Oceanography in Goa, India), the Medusa class ASV and AUVs, including the Deep-Sea Medusa. Recently, he also led the design of a through-water wireless optical modem.
He was IST’s Principal Investigator for ten EU funded collaborative research projects and several national research projects. These EU projects included the design of the vehicle and mission control systems of Sirene, an autonomous underwater shuttle, the design and implementation of the advanced multi-vehicle MORPH system capable of executing data acquisition and habitat mapping tasks in complex 3D environments, and the development of an innovative set-up between a diver and companion autonomous robots (underwater and surface) that exhibit cognitive behavior through learning, interpreting, and adapting to the diver’s behavior, physical state, and actions in the CADDY project.
He has supervised 10 PhD students and holds 2 patents. His former PhD students have moved to very important positions in academia and industry in Portugal and in Europe and Asia. António’s contributions in education are outstanding, not only because of breadth and depth, but also because of the engaging aspects of his method.
He has published a total of 70 book chapters and peer reviewed journal papers and 250 conference papers (h-index 34, i10-index 127).
He published seminal papers on path and trajectory tracking, on coordination and formation control under limited communications, as well as on navigation and acoustic positioning, with recent focus on cooperative navigation and control and on feature-based navigation.
His laboratory has built close collaboration links with international institutions and has attracted graduate students from all over the world to pursue their MSc and PhD degrees in fields related to dynamical system theory and ocean and aerial robotics. He also established strong collaboration links all over the world, including Europe, USA, Brazil, India, Korea, Japan and Macau. In particular, he has a 3-decade long cooperation with the National Institute of Oceanography in Goa, India,
He was Associate Editor of the IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering and of the International Journal of Systems, Control and Communications, Chair of the IFAC Technical Committee Marine Systems, 2008-2014, and the Representative of the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) to EurOcean, the European Center for Information on Marine Science and Technology.
He has been the driving force behind the organization of several important workshops and conferences. He is the co-chair of the IEEE/MTS OCEANS 2021 conference that will take place in Porto, Portugal, in May 2021.
Finally, his contributions to OES, and to the society in general, are truly unique and engaging in their world-wide expression.
Community Appreciation Award
The Awards Committee also presented a one-time AUV Community Appreciation Award to Dr. Tom Curtin for his stellar work in identifying the hardest problems in terms of autonomous marine systems. He played a critical role in shepherding the technology while mentoring the people doing the work. This included his efforts related to funding the Spray, Slocum and University of Washington gliders. In funding the Odyssey (later Bluefin), Remus (Hydroid) and other AUVs and in pushing the entire concept of Autonomous Ocean Sampling Networks including multiple vehicle navigation, communications and docking. And finally this award is also for his continuing work for the good of the community with his engagement in K-16 involvement in marine technology.
Suleman Mazhar has been working as a professor in Information & Communication Engineering at Harbin Engineering University (China) since July 2019. He did PhD from Tokyo University (Japan) and postdoctorate from Georgetown University (Washington DC, USA). He had BS-CS from FAST-NUCES (Lahore) and MS from GIK Institute (Pakistan). He is TYSP young scientist fellow (Ministry of Science & Technology China) and have won several research grants from international organizations such as DAAD (Germany), ICIMOD (Nepal), NRPU (Higher Education Commission Pakistan), WWF (Worldwide Fund for Nature) Pakistan. His research focus is deep learning and signal processing applications for environmental monitoring, with particular focus on underwater acoustics, and marine mammal conservation. He is a reviewer for professional journals such as Journal of Acoustical Society (America), IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, IEEE Sensors Journal, Applied Acoustics, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems.
Peng Ren is a full professor with the College of Oceanography and Space Informatics, China University of Petroleum (East China). He is the director of Qingdao International Research Center for Intelligent Forecast and Detection of Oceanic Catastrophes. He received the K. M. Scott Prize from the University of York, the Natural Science award (first rank) from China Institute of Electronics, and the Eduardo Caianiello Best Student Paper Award from 18th International Conference on Image Analysis and Processing as one co-author. He has served as an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing.
Mohd Rizal Arshad is a full professor at the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Malaysia, where he specializes in ocean robotics technology and intelligent system. He received his B.Eng. in Medical Electronics & Instrumentation and PhD in Electronic Engineering from University of Liverpool, UK in 1994 and 1999, respectively. He completed his MSc. in Electronic Control Engineering from the University of Salford, UK in Dec 1995. He has supervised many postgraduate students and published extensively in local and international publications. He is a senior member of the IEEE, and was awarded IEEE OES Presidential Award in 2019.
Itzik Klein is an Assistant Professor, heading the Autonomous Navigation and Sensor Fusion Lab, at the Charney School of Marine Sciences, Hatter Department of Marine Technologies, University of Haifa. He is an IEEE Senior Member and a member of the IEEE Journal of Indoor and Seamless Positioning and Navigation (J-ISPIN) Editorial Board. Prior to joining the University of Haifa, he worked at leading companies in Israel on navigation topics for more than 15 years. He has a wide range of experience in navigation systems and sensor fusion from both industry and academic perspectives. His research interests lie in the intersection of artificial intelligence with inertial sensing, sensor fusion, and autonomous underwater vehicles.
John R. Potter (IEEE M’94, SM’02, F’18) graduated in the previous century with a joint honours Mathematics and Physics Degree from Bristol and a PhD. in Glaciology and Oceanography from Cambridge, UK studying Antarctic ice mass balance, where he spent four consecutive summers. This work helped underscore the non-linear fragility of polar ice to climate change and led to him receiving the Polar Medal from Queen Elizabeth II in 1988.
Nick is a Visiting Fellow at the UK National Oceanographic Center, Southampton His nomination was endorsed by the Underwater Acoustics Technology Committee. He had worked as a Research Associate and Lecturer at University of Birmingham and has been working as a Research Scientist at the Applied Research Laboratory, University of Texas, Austin. He has also served as a Program Officer at the Office of Naval Research Global. He is a senior member of IEEE (OES) and a Fellow of Acoustical Society of America (ASA). Nick has also been serving as Assoc. Editor for IEEE JoE and JASA. He is widely acknowledged for his expertise are seabed acoustics, parametric array modeling, sonar beamformer, underwater signal processing.
Maurizio Migliaccio (M’91-SM’00-F’17) is Full professor of Electromagnetics at Università di Napoli Parthenope (Italy) and was Affiliated Full Professor at NOVA Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, FL (USA). He has been teaching Microwave Remote Sensing since 1994. He was visiting scientist at Deutsche Forschungsanstalt fur Lüft und Raumfahrt (DLR), Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany. He was member of the Italian Space Agency (ASI) scientific committee. He was member of the ASI CosmoSkyMed second generation panel. He was e-geos AdCom member. He was Italian delegate of the ESA PB-EO board. He was Member of South Africa Expert Review Panel for Space Exploration. He serves as reviewer for the UE, Italian Research Ministry (MIUR), NCST, Kazakhstan and Hong Kong Research board. He lectured in USA, Canada, Brazil, China, Hong Kong, Germany, Spain, Czech Republic, Switzerland and Italy. He was Italian delegate at UE COST SMOS Mode Action. He is listed in the Italian Top Scientists. He is an IEEE Trans. Geoscience and Remote Sensing AE, International Journal of Remote Sensing AE, and was IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering AE Special Issue on Radar for Marine and Maritime Remote Sensing, IEEE JSTARS AE of the Special Issue on CosmoSKyMed, Member of the Indian Journal of Radio & Space Physics Editorial board. His main current scientific interests cover SAR sea oil slick and man-made target monitoring, remote sensing for marine and coastal applications, remote sensing for agriculture monitoring, polarimetry, inverse problems for resolution enhancement, reverberating chambers. He published about 160 peer-reviewed journal papers on remote sensing and applied electromagnetics.
He has developed various types of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) and related application technologies including navigation methods, a new sensing method using a chemical sensor, precise seafloor mapping methods, a precise seabed positioning system with a resolution of a few centimeters, a new sensing system of the thickness of cobalt-rich crust; and more. He has shown, by using these technologies that AUVs are practicable and valuable tools for deep-sea exploration.
Donna Kocak has had an outstanding career in defense and scientific projects developing and applying solutions in subsea optics, imaging and robotics. She graduated with an M.Sc in Computer Science in 1997 from the University of Central Florida; an MBA in 2008 from the University of Florida; and M.Sc in Industrial Engineering in 2011 from the University of Central Florida. She is currently a Senior Scientist, Advanced Concepts Engineering, and Fellow at the Harris Corporation in Melbourne, Florida, where she has developed novel optical imaging and communication solutions for under-sea defense and scientific projects. Prior to 2008 Donna Kocak was Founder and President of Green Sky Imaging, LLC (GSI) who developed laser/video photogrammetry software for underwater inspection and survey. Her earlier career positions were with Naval Training Systems Center, Florida; Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution, Florida; eMerge Interactive; and the Advanced Technologies Group in Florida.
John Potter has a Joint Honours degree in Mathematics and Physics from Bristol University in the UK and a PhD in Glaciology and Oceanography from the University of Cambridge on research in the Antarctic, for which he was awarded the Polar Medal in 1988. John has worked on polar oceanography, underwater acoustics, ambient noise (including imaging), marine mammals, communications, IoUT, autonomous vehicles and strategic development. He has 40 years’ international experience working at the British Antarctic Survey in the UK, NATO in Italy, SIO in California, NUS in Singapore and most recently at NTNU in Norway. John is a Fellow of the IEEE and MTS, an Associate Editor for the IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, IEEE OES Distinguished Lecturer, PADI Master Scuba Diver Trainer & an International Fellow of the Explorer’s Club.
Dr. James V. Candy is the Chief Scientist for Engineering and former Director of the Center for Advanced Signal & Image Sciences at the University of California, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Dr. Candy received a commission in the USAF in 1967 and was a Systems Engineer/Test Director from 1967 to 1971. He has been a Researcher at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory since 1976 holding various positions including that of Project Engineer for Signal Processing and Thrust Area Leader for Signal and Control Engineering. Educationally, he received his B.S.E.E. degree from the University of Cincinnati and his M.S.E. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Florida, Gainesville. He is a registered Control System Engineer in the state of California. He has been an Adjunct Professor at San Francisco State University, University of Santa Clara, and UC Berkeley, Extension teaching graduate courses in signal and image processing. He is an Adjunct Full-Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Candy is a Fellow of the IEEE and a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) and elected as a Life Member (Fellow) at the University of Cambridge (Clare Hall College). He is a member of Eta Kappa Nu and Phi Kappa Phi honorary societies. He was elected as a Distinguished Alumnus by the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Candy received the IEEE Distinguished Technical Achievement Award for the “development of model-based signal processing in ocean acoustics.” Dr. Candy was selected as a IEEE Distinguished Lecturer for oceanic signal processing as well as presenting an IEEE tutorial on advanced signal processing available through their video website courses. He was nominated for the prestigious Edward Teller Fellowship at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Dr. Candy was awarded the Interdisciplinary Helmholtz-Rayleigh Silver Medal in Signal Processing/Underwater Acoustics by the Acoustical Society of America for his technical contributions. He has published over 225 journal articles, book chapters, and technical reports as well as written three texts in signal processing, “Signal Processing: the Model-Based Approach,” (McGraw-Hill, 1986), “Signal Processing: the Modern Approach,” (McGraw-Hill, 1988), “Model-Based Signal Processing,” (Wiley/IEEE Press, 2006) and “Bayesian Signal Processing: Classical, Modern and Particle Filtering” (Wiley/IEEE Press, 2009). He was the General Chairman of the inaugural 2006 IEEE Nonlinear Statistical Signal Processing Workshop held at the Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge. He has presented a variety of short courses and tutorials sponsored by the IEEE and ASA in Applied Signal Processing, Spectral Estimation, Advanced Digital Signal Processing, Applied Model-Based Signal Processing, Applied Acoustical Signal Processing, Model-Based Ocean Acoustic Signal Processing and Bayesian Signal Processing for IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society/ASA. He has also presented short courses in Applied Model-Based Signal Processing for the SPIE Optical Society. He is currently the IEEE Chair of the Technical Committee on “Sonar Signal and Image Processing” and was the Chair of the ASA Technical Committee on “Signal Processing in Acoustics” as well as being an Associate Editor for Signal Processing of ASA (on-line JASAXL). He was recently nominated for the Vice Presidency of the ASA and elected as a member of the Administrative Committee of IEEE OES. His research interests include Bayesian estimation, identification, spatial estimation, signal and image processing, array signal processing, nonlinear signal processing, tomography, sonar/radar processing and biomedical applications.
Kenneth Foote is a Senior Scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from The George Washington University in 1968, and a Ph.D. in Physics from Brown University in 1973. He was an engineer at Raytheon Company, 1968-1974; postdoctoral scholar at Loughborough University of Technology, 1974-1975; research fellow and substitute lecturer at the University of Bergen, 1975-1981. He began working at the Institute of Marine Research, Bergen, in 1979; joined the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 1999. His general area of expertise is in underwater sound scattering, with applications to the quantification of fish, other aquatic organisms, and physical scatterers in the water column and on the seafloor. In developing and transitioning acoustic methods and instruments to operations at sea, he has worked from 77°N to 55°S.
René Garello, professor at Télécom Bretagne, Fellow IEEE, co-leader of the TOMS (Traitements, Observations et Méthodes Statistiques) research team, in Pôle CID of the UMR CNRS 3192 Lab-STICC.
Professor Mal Heron is Adjunct Professor in the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia, and is CEO of Portmap Remote Ocean Sensing Pty Ltd. His PhD work in Auckland, New Zealand, was on radio-wave probing of the ionosphere, and that is reflected in his early ionospheric papers. He changed research fields to the scattering of HF radio waves from the ocean surface during the 1980s. Through the 1990s his research has broadened into oceanographic phenomena which can be studied by remote sensing, including HF radar and salinity mapping from airborne microwave radiometers . Throughout, there have been one-off papers where he has been involved in solving a problem in a cognate area like medical physics, and paleobiogeography. Occasionally, he has diverted into side-tracks like a burst of papers on the effect of bushfires on radio communications. His present project of the Australian Coastal Ocean Radar Network (ACORN) is about the development of new processing methods and applications of HF radar data to address oceanography problems. He is currently promoting the use of high resolution VHF ocean radars, based on the PortMap high resolution radar.
Hanu Singh graduated B.S. ECE and Computer Science (1989) from George Mason University and Ph.D. (1995) from MIT/Woods Hole.He led the development and commercialization of the Seabed AUV, nine of which are in operation at other universities and government laboratories around the world. He was technical lead for development and operations for Polar AUVs (Jaguar and Puma) and towed vehicles(Camper and Seasled), and the development and commercialization of the Jetyak ASVs, 18 of which are currently in use. He was involved in the development of UAS for polar and oceanographic applications, and high resolution multi-sensor acoustic and optical mapping with underwater vehicles on over 55 oceanographic cruises in support of physical oceanography, marine archaeology, biology, fisheries, coral reef studies, geology and geophysics and sea-ice studies. He is an accomplished Research Student advisor and has made strong collaborations across the US (including at MIT, SIO, Stanford, Columbia LDEO) and internationally including in the UK, Australia, Canada, Korea, Taiwan, China, Japan, India, Sweden and Norway. Hanu Singh is currently Chair of the IEEE Ocean Engineering Technology Committee on Autonomous Marine Systems with responsibilities that include organizing the biennial IEEE AUV Conference, 2008 onwards. Associate Editor, IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, 2007-2011. Associate editor, Journal of Field Robotics 2012 onwards.
Milica Stojanovic graduated from the University of Belgrade, Serbia, in 1988, and received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Northeastern University in Boston, in 1991 and 1993. She was a Principal Scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and in 2008 joined Northeastern University, where she is currently a Professor of electrical and computer engineering. She is also a Guest Investigator at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Milica’s research interests include digital communications theory, statistical signal processing and wireless networks, and their applications to underwater acoustic systems. She has made pioneering contributions to underwater acoustic communications, and her work has been widely cited. She is a Fellow of the IEEE, and serves as an Associate Editor for its Journal of Oceanic Engineering (and in the past for Transactions on Signal Processing and Transactions on Vehicular Technology). She also serves on the Advisory Board of the IEEE Communication Letters, and chairs the IEEE Ocean Engineering Society’s Technical Committee for Underwater Communication, Navigation and Positioning. Milica is the recipient of the 2015 IEEE/OES Distinguished Technical Achievement Award.
Dr. Paul C. Hines was born and raised in Glace Bay, Cape Breton. From 1977-1981 he attended Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, graduating with a B.Sc. (Hon) in Engineering-Physics.