The partners of the European Smart Submarine Robots Working in Co-operative Networks Project (SWARMs), funded by the European Commission and the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, organised the first demonstration of the project in Mangalia, Romania, July 03-13, 2017.
The general objective of the SWARMs Project, co-ordinated by the Polytechnic University of Madrid, is to extend the use of unmanned submarine vehicles and facilitate the creation, planning and execution of maritime and off-shore operations by reducing operating costs and enhancing security.
At the meeting in Mangalia, different partners shared the resources and results obtained by the project to date in order to offer the auditors from the European Commission a successful demonstration.
ECA Group demonstrated two advanced robotic features on an experimental version of its A9-E modified specially for the SWARMS project. The modifications included an extra acoustic modem with network protocols from Evologics fitted in a modified front payload section and an additional advanced autonomy interface on-board computing capabilities.
PLOCAN took hydrogen sulphide (H2S) measurements in the operations area with a reference probe, which were integrated in mobile platforms to draw up a concentration distribution map that then had to be monitored by several unmanned autonomous vehicles taking part in the manoeuvres. The result of these measurements was important in the presentation of the project demonstration that was attended by several representatives from the European Commission.
After this initial validation, PLOCAN and the other project partners, continue working on getting results for the final demonstration that will take part in June 2018 in Norway.