De-Mine (2012-2016)

Project Title: Tactile sensing applied to underwater autonomous vehicles for near shore survey and de-mining

Motivation

The sea is as important as it has always been to global civilisations, maritime freight in EU-27 ports has steadily increased to 3641 million tonnes of seaborne goods in 2010, this is an increase of 5.7% when compared to the previous annual amount, whilst output from aquaculture and fisheries is predicted to exceed 135 million tons by 2015. Therefore, compromised critical transit routes in war zones or natural disasters can have a serious impact on lives. Hostile vessels pose a serious threat, that can be dealt with directly, whereas, sub sea mine fields can effectively cut off routes until it is certain they have been completely cleared. This takes much more time and resources.

Project objective

The prime contention that motivates this project is that a sense of whisker based touch, inspired by nature, can be deployed on Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) to reduce the economic and life costs of mine counter measures as well as improve overall capacity, particularly in response to asymmetric threats within the littoral zone.

Back to Biomimetic and neuro-robotics

Page last updated 12 May 2016