PLENARY LECTURE
TITLE: Marine Robotics: From Theory to Practice
By António M. Pascoal
Institute for Systems and Robotics (ISR)
and
Department of Electrical Engineering and
Computers of the
Instituto Superior Técnico (IST)
ISR-IST, Torre Norte
Av. Rovisco Pais, 1 1049-001 Lisbon, Portugal
email: antonio@isr.ist.utl.pt
http://www.isr.ist.utl.pt
SUMMARY: Worldwide, there is currently great interest
in fostering initiatives that aim at bridging
the gap between marine science and technology
by exploring fruitful collaboration links
between engineers and marine scientists,
namely biologists, geologists, and oceanographers.
This symbiosis is instrumental in providing
engineers with complex, challenging problems
in the field of marine robotics. Conversely,
it will provide marine scientists with ever
increasingly complex technologies to explore
the ocean frontier, especially in hazardous
conditions.
This talk will focus on the interplay between
theory and practice in marine robotics. The
first part of the talk will provide a quick
overview of the marine robotics field and
highlight scientific and commercial applications.
This will be followed by the description
of challenging problems in Navigation, Guidance,
and Control (NGC) that arise in the process
of developing marine robots that must perform
reliably at sea. Key concepts and classical
as well as newly emerging design techniques
in NGC will be summarized. The final part
of the talk will provide the bridge between
concept and practice. Hardware and software
architectures for algorithm implementation
on existing prototypes of surface and underwater
robots developed at the Institute for Systems
and Robotics (ISR, pole of Lisbon) will be
presented. Videos will show actual operations
at sea.