The vision of the SUNRISE project is to allow underwater robots to work autonomously following instructions, to communicate with each other and to send data back to computers through the Internet, regardless of circumstances or challenges to data transmission.
This would allow identifying threats to oil and gas pipelines, monitoring the environment, protecting underwater archaeological sites and finding out more about the geology of our planet – The potential of aquatic robots to help us learn is endless.
One of the key challenges the project faces are the changing environments and circumstances. This unpredictable environment is one of the key ways the underwater internet of things differs from our land-based use of WiFi and the internet. These challenges can only be met by bringing together multiple robots, so if one can’t communicate temporarily, another will take over the signalling.
The components communicated, the robots responded to their instructions and the scientists were thrilled during the work done in summer 2014, in Porto. The robots have already helped to find a lost container in the port of Porto.
SUNRISE has brought together a cutting-edge team with partners from Italy, Germany, Portugal, Netherlands, Turkey and United States. ‘This is the biggest scale endeavour in this field, globally. We are putting Europe at the frontier of this type of work… and results are starting to come in,’ says Team Leader, Dr Petrioli.
Now that the project has working prototypes, the next stage is to bring in new partners from different areas of interest and set up centres off the coast of the USA, in Dutch lakes, and in the Black Sea in Turkey. The second open call for new partners has just finished and the expected start date of the new experiments is 1 November 2015.
SUNRISE project will exhibit at ICT 2015 in the Transform area from 20 – 22 Oct in Lisbon.
SUNRISE in the ICT 2015 catalogue
