Bharath Kalyan, Hari Vishnu, Venugopalan Pallayil & Ahmed Mahmood
(With Inputs From the SAUVC Committee)
The seventh edition of the SAUVC was organized from March 8 to 11, 2019. It was held in Singapore Polytechnic. This edition was the largest ever in terms of team registration and participation, continuing the trend set by the past editions. It witnessed a record-breaking 61 teams registered. Similar to the previous editions, we also had a student engagement technical workshop on AUV related topics. Public engagement is an important element to any event and is the best way to disseminate the objective of scientific events to the general public. To meet this objective, SAUVC, this year and for the first time, organized two special events; a technical workshop featuring a tutorial on the basics of underwater robotics and another one on Robot Operating System (ROS) meet up. The details of these technical workshops have been covered in a separate report.
Participating Teams
The teams that registered for the event had to pass a qualification criteria for participation in the event. The teams were required to submit a video of their AUV swimming underwater for at least 10 seconds and demonstrate the usage of their AUV’s kill switch to showcase AUV operation and safety. Based on these criteria, 39 of the 61 registered teams were selected to compete in the event. In total there were around 350 student participants at the event. The SAUVC 2019 witnessed 11 teams from India, 6 teams from Singapore, 4 teams each from Indonesia & Malaysia, 3 teams each from Hong Kong, 2 teams each from Bangladesh, China, & Russia and a team each from Japan, Sri Lanka, Macau, Thailand & Taiwan respectively. The representation of teams from all across Asia, particularly from South Asia & South East Asia, was phenomenal and shows the value that SAUVC brings to this region. There were many first-timers and some regulars in the participating teams.
Opening Ceremony
Dr Mohamad Maliki bin Osman, Senior Minister of State at the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Singapore was the guest of honor and inaugurated the 7th edition of SAUVC.
Following the inauguration, a walk-about session was organized where the senior minister had a chance to interact with some of the participating students. This was followed by a walk-about with a panel of judges scoring the teams for the newly introduced “most innovative engineering” award by IEEE OES.
Dr Mohamad Maliki bin Osman, interacting
with students during walk-about session.
The Challenge
The SAUVC 2019 consisted of two tiers—qualification round and final round for the participating teams. To qualify for the final round of the competition, the AUV had to swim from a starting line and pass through the qualification gate without surfacing, touching the bottom/wall or the qualification gate. Only the top 15 from the qualified teams, with the fastest time for the qualifying round, were allowed to advance to the final round. In the final round, the teams would accumulate points by completing a series of tasks aimed at testing the AUV’s acoustic and visual navigation capabilities, positioning, actuation and robotic manipulation. The table below provides the different functional capabilities of the AUV being tested and the related tasks.
Each task carried a certain number of points, depending on the challenge and the difficulty involved in performing it. Teams were awarded bonus points if the AUV met certain weight and dimension conditions and also based on the time taken for the tasks to be performed. The tasks were similar to the past year’s competition, but made more challenging through randomization of the position of the buckets, flare and gate and its orientation. A complete description of the tasks, static judging criteria and award of points are covered in the competition rule book available at https://sauvc.github.io/rulebook/. 19 teams, out of the 39 that competed, completed the qualification task, which is a record within the SAUVC event. This demonstrated the improving quality of participating teams, and their increased level of preparedness. This could partly be attributed to prior participation by the teams in similar competitions held locally or regionally. Out of these 19, however, only the top 16 were allowed to compete in the finals due to constraints on the logistics and time available for the finals day.
Federal University, Russia.
SAUVC 2019: Award Winners
The team from Far Eastern Federal University, Russia, who has also been consistently in the top 3 over the last 5 years, emerged as the champions for completing the largest number of the tasks with additional bonus points on time and system weight. They have been doing consistently well because the team has passed on the expertise gained over the years effectively to junior teams. The team from Bogor Agricultural University, again one of the SAUVC veterans, secured the first runner-up position and the Northwestern Polytechnic University who were the SAUVC 2018 champions, secured the 2nd runner up position this year. The top 3 teams in the finals are as follows:
- Far Eastern Federal University/Institute of Marine Technology Problems, Russia
- Bogor Agricultural University, Indonesia
- Northwestern Polytechnical University, China
University, Indonesia).
In addition to the top 3 finalists, we had introduced in this edition an OES “most innovative engineering” award. This was judged by a technical panel consisting of 5 members. The following rubrics were used to judge the teams:
- Innovative Hardware Design and Engineering
- Innovative Software Engineering
- Innovative Operational Techniques
- Innovative Competition Strategy
Innovation was defined as anything that is new/different and intentionally implemented for a specific stated purpose in SAUVC. Based on the above criteria, the team from City University Hong Kong (Team Pioneer) was awarded the OES “most innovative engineering” award, in this edition of SAUVC.
As in previous editions, we continued with the social media photo competition, which was started in 2016, to engage more students, including non-participants on the competition. This has also helped to get more visibility for the event. This year, the numbers on social media outreach and impressions achieved via the competition, went through the roof. SVKM’s NMIMS Mukesh Patel Institute from India received a staggering 46,077 likes on their photo, while Bogor Agricultural university, Indonesia received 17,300 likes. One of the noteworthy changes this time was the shift by teams to Instagram as the social media portal of choice for the competition, as compared to Facebook last year. Instagram was included in the list of allowed social media outlets only starting from this year, so that word of SAUVC would reach a larger crowd of youngsters worldwide.
Gala Dinner & Award Ceremony
The winners were announced at an award presentation ceremony on March 11th, which was held at University Town Auditorium, National University of Singapore. This saw over three hundred students come together with the guest speakers, SAUVC committee members and volunteers, for an eventful evening to close the competition. The award presentation saw some fun-filled and high-adrenaline moments when each of the prizes were announced. Loud cheers erupted when video summaries of the competition days were played, while participants rejoiced over the memories of the past 4 days. The gala dinner was hosted to show our appreciation to the participating student teams and our sponsors and volunteers, as well as facilitate good interaction to bring the curtains down on the event. A plaque was presented to the SAUVC 2019 committee by IEEE OES, in appreciation of their efforts in organizing the event successfully with such a large outreach.
Figure 9. The 7th edition local organizing committee received a token of appreciation from IEEE OES.
Dr. Ahmed Mahmood, the General Chair of SAUVC 2019 holding the plaque.
Figure 10. Participants enjoying the gala dinner at University Town Auditorium, National University of Singapore.
Participant Feedback
We sought anonymous feedback from the participants through an online survey following the event. The feedback was excellent.
Some statistics from the feedback are shown in an infographic here.
Some of the testimonials received are as follows:
“I enjoy listening to the talks and sharing sessions very much. The thing I like the most throughout the whole event is the atmosphere and interaction with other teams and professionals. It’s really a good learning platform. So, please organize again next year:)”
“Keep spare parts for EVERYTHING, make a lot of friends (including/specially the organizes)!! Try to arrive at least one day before day0, leave as late as possible;) In your main system/program/bot, add a status feedback(display/dashboard/led indicator) for all the sensors so that u know all your sensors are working properly.”
“The best part of this event was—It was more like a meet up of Engineering teams from different countries.”
“I have grown my knowledge and exercised my abilities. My favourite is post-match communication and party carnival.”
Event Publicity & Social Outreach
The event publicity statistics for this edition of SAUVC were impressive. The competition was extensively covered on social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Weibo, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube) by our social media team. Instagram and Weibo were explored newly this year as publicity media, to tap into a larger base of youngsters, and also interested people from China. The SAUVC Facebook page saw very high activity based on the numbers we obtained from Facebook page statistics. The organic impressions on Facebook over a 2 week period from March 3-16 was 89,458. We also undertook extensive video coverage, which included video interviews with all the teams, invited guest speakers, getting their views on the competition and their experience at the event. Interviews of the teams and guests, and daily highlights from the event, are available at the following link (https://www.youtube.com/user/ARLTMSINUSChannel). The interest and international reach of the SAUVC was also evident from the fact that we had members from organizing committees of Robosub, RobotX and Virtual AUV Competition visiting us as observers and sharing their feedback.
Figure 12. Internet traffic on—1. sauvc.org 2. Weibo account 3. Twitter handle
4. Facebook page (Top to Bottom).
Sponsorship
The SAUVC is run solely on sponsorship. Like every edition, IEEE OES has been the biggest supporter and its local chapter is the co-organizer of the event. NUS & SP have been extremely supportive in co-organizing the event. ONR & ONRG have been supportive over the years and we had a big delegation visiting us, this year. Society of Underwater Technology had set up standees promoting their society during the event. We are very grateful and would like to say a big “thank you” to all our sponsors of SAUVC.
Organizing Committee & Volunteers
SAUVC is a complete volunteering effort. It is solely organized by a passionate group of ocean engineers. The local organizing committee (LOC) comprises of the chair, secretary, treasurer and five sub-committees namely technical, sponsorship, academic outreach, publicity & logistics.
Acknowledgements
SAUVC 2019 was attended by several invited eminent underwater robotics experts from around the world. This includes Mr. William Kirkwood from Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, a familiar face at SAUVC, who has been extremely supportive of the event over the years. His presence at the event has always been a morale booster for the organizing committee and the participants. Dr. Gabriele Ferri & Dr. Fausto Ferreira, from NATO Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation were extremely supportive in judging the event and providing technical insights to the teams from their years of experience in organizing ERL. Ms. Kelly Cooper from Office of Naval Research & Mr. Richard Mills from Kongsberg Maritime were also a constant presence amongst the participants, and could be seen discussing with teams. We also thank Dr. Jeffrey Simmen from Office of Naval Research Global, Singapore office, another familiar face at SAUVC, for his extensive supportive of the event, over the years.
Concluding Remarks
SAUVC has been successfully organized for seven consecutive years now, growing each year and becoming possibly the largest and most well represented autonomous underwater vehicle competition for students in Asia. One aspect of SAUVC is that it does not charge a blanket registration fee for teams to participate. This is a policy aimed at promoting fledgling teams to compete, and generating interest in underwater robotics. SAUVC is also popular for its academic outreach, and we also try our best to provide mentoring for the teams. It was encouraging to see that there was very good information sharing amongst the teams. Most teams took home the message that SAUVC is all about learning and sharing rather than just competing. As far as we, the SAUVC committee are concerned, this is the biggest win of all and one that provides us with the utmost satisfaction.
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.