Robots are increasingly used across various fields, and the renewable energy sector’s need for sustainability could benefit from robotic solutions in floating offshore wind farms. The EU-funded AEROSUB project will develop advanced robotic solutions for both fixed and floating offshore wind farms, focusing on improving operation and maintenance procedures to enhance the sustainability of renewable energy in challenging environments.
The project will demonstrate how robotics, integrated with AI and data analytics, can reduce CO2 emissions from operations by up to 15 million tonnes and lower the levelised cost of electricity by 2.5 %. It will use various robotic platforms to optimise collaboration between humans and robots, minimising personnel exposure to hazardous environments.
BATTLEVERSE envisions bridging real and virtual battle environments to support dynamic and effective mission planning and execution, through multi-domain simulations. Leveraging AI-driven scenario generation and reinforcement learning, BATTLEVERSE will enable the virtual execution of complex mission scenarios, delivering actionable insights into battlefield dynamics and improving response times. It will provide commanders with an interactive virtual battlespace enriched by digital twins of battle assets, landscapes, and weather for precise testing of multiple courses of action and to simulate potential enemy responses.
Human activities and climate change are causing ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss. Previous approaches, which focused on sector-based management in isolation and single spatial scales, have failed to halt biodiversity loss. The EU-funded BioProtect project aims to develop innovative ecosystem-based solutions for protecting and restoring biodiversity in European seas. It will use the ABM-DSF framework to engage stakeholders, monitor biodiversity changes, map human pressures, prioritise areas for protection and restoration, and measure ecological and socio-economic impacts.
The project will demonstrate these solutions in five sites ranging from the Arctic to the Atlantic. It will consider ‘what-if’ scenarios, including climate change, protection strategies, and their impacts. The consortium possesses expertise in both the Atlantic and Arctic basins.
Balancing the protection of fragile deep-sea ecosystems with the responsible use of marine resources demands advanced monitoring tools. The TRIDENT project is developing a next-generation system for environmental impact assessment in deep-sea exploration and potential exploitation activities.
Operating autonomously under extreme ocean conditions, the system will collect real-time physical, chemical, geological, and biological data from surface to seabed—supporting compliance with international and national regulations. By integrating cutting-edge technologies, TRIDENT will close key data gaps, improve impact prediction, and provide decision-makers with robust, science-based insights.
Europe is gradually reducing its dependence on Russian gas. While renewable energy projects are crucial, they face challenges such as limited onshore space availability, disruptions in the supply chain, and concerns about visual pollution. Offshore floating PV (OFPV) is capable of providing hundreds of gigawatts in Europe by 2050. OFPV can complement offshore wind farms and facilitate achieving high renewable energy penetration in regions with low wind resources.
The EU-funded Nautical SUNRISE project aims to demonstrate a 5 MW grid-connected OFPV system within a commercial wind farm. Prior to the demonstration, the system will undergo technical reliability tests. The project will quantify the cost reduction achieved through design improvements and assess the environmental impact of OFPV.
The European Green Deal has recognised aquaculture and algae as promising solutions to achieving the goals of the Farm-to-Fork Strategy. However, despite its potential, the growth of aquaculture in Europe has been limited compared to the significant expansion observed in Asia. In this context, the EU-funded INNOAQUA project aims to lay the foundations for the future in-land aquaculture industry in Europe.
It will demonstrate the benefits of algae and various advanced technologies. It will also showcase the logistical, operational, and digital processes of the sector, highlighting the groundbreaking efficiency and promise offered by these technologies. The project will actively contribute to the integration of innovations and will work towards expanding the reach of the industry.
Enhanced border surveillance across EU borders is essential for monitoring and deterring illegal activities, particularly through real-time maritime situational awareness technologies. The EU-funded SEAGUARD project aims to develop an innovative and integrated maritime cross-border surveillance system. This system will combine multiple sensing technologies across fixed and mobile platforms.
It will also incorporate unmanned vehicles (UxVs), fixed buoys, submarine cables, and advanced analytics to monitor and detect various threats, such as illegal border crossings, contraband smuggling, illegal fishing, and terrorist activities. The system will provide real-time information to border guards and authorities, enabling them to effectively respond to threats from the air, surface, or underwater.
In Europe, many archipelagos and inland waterways can be found. The use of such waterways for the airborne transportation of both goods and persons has huge potential, and in many cases is the only possible way. In this cases, the transportation of goods and persons by airplanes or ships has many drawbacks. The first have the problem of cost and environmental impact, while the second, while allowing larger payloads, have the drawback of limited speed. Additionally, both are extremely low energy efficient at high speed. AIRSHIP envisions an innovative use of a known transportation mean: flying ships. Such vehicles (also known as ekranoplans or wing-in-ground -WIG- vehicles) are designed and built to take advantage of the ground effect, that allows these crafts to fly with enhanced lift and reduced drag. WIGS inherit all the advantages of conventional airborne transportation, while being more energy efficient and environmentally friendly, both from the carbon footprint and the acoustic noise pollution point of view.
AIRSHIP will study and develop new technologies in zero-emission power, on-boar AI and in automatic flight control that overcome the challenging technological problems that flying in ground effect poses, allowing such vehicles to become autonomous so they can be effectively used in a wide range of business applications and services, leading to new aviation business models. Our aim is to lay the foundations of a new class of fully electrical unmanned aircraft system, the UWV (Unmanned WIG Vehicle) that brings together speed, flexibility and energy efficiency.
As the demand for renewable energy escalates, the photovoltaic (PV) sector faces critical challenges. Labour-intensive and hazardous tasks, along with rising operational costs and resource wastage, slow the industry’s growth. Additionally, human workforce limitations impact the efficiency and the monitoring capabilities of PV plants, necessitating a transformative solution. In this context, the EU-funded TALOS project will develop state-of-the-art robotics solutions for various PV energy scenarios, including land-based, floating and agriPV.
Through its autonomous robotic systems, TALOS seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, save water resources, lower operation and maintenance costs, and enhance PV plant performance. Furthermore, it will facilitate human-robot and robot-robot collaboration, making PV energy safer and more efficient.
The EU-funded MAGPIE project will embark on 12 pilot activities in three key areas: alternative energy sources; smart technologies applied to power operations; and river and rail connections with the hinterland. The ports of Rotterdam (Netherlands) and Sines (Portugal), as well as Haropa Port (France) and the DeltaPort association (Germany) are supporting the project. MAGPIE will combine the accelerated introduction of green energy carriers with logistics optimisation in ports through automation and autonomous operations.
The project will demonstrate technical, operational and procedural energy supply solutions to stimulate green, smart and integrated multimodal transport, and guarantee their implementation through the European Green Ports of the Future Master Plan.
In Europe, the push for renewable energy is obstructed by limited land availability and community opposition to onshore wind and solar installations. This poses a challenge to the EU’s ambitious Green Deal objectives. In this context, the EU-funded BLUE-X project will unlock the vast potential of blue renewable energy sources. Offshore wind, solar, waves, tides and currents offer a promising solution, but their upscaling is hindered by costly and time-consuming surveys.
BLUE-X, a Copernicus-based initiative, revolutionises decision-making in offshore energy projects. By harnessing Earth observation and MetOcean data in a cloud-based network, it streamlines planning, construction and operation phases. This approach aligns with the European Green Deal, advancing climate ambitions while ensuring clean, affordable and secure energy.
The project “Sea/Air Interphasic Wing-in-Ground Effect Autonomous Drones” (SEAWINGS) will develop a new class of military surveillance drones to operate in the sea/air interface giving rise to a new type of unmanned craft, Unmanned Wing-in-Ground Vehicles, capable of very high payloads, inexpensive, long-range that do not require infrastructure or launch vehicle for departure and landing.
Fishing gear poses a threat to our seas, and fisheries activities lead to the generation of marine litter. The EU-funded NETTAG+ project will develop three innovative and sustainable solutions to mitigate the adverse impacts of fishing gear on marine life and habitats. These solutions aim to prevent marine litter, minimise fishing gear loss, and remove abandoned fishing gear.
By reducing abandoned, lost, and discarded fishing gear (ALDFG) and decreasing marine pollution, the project aims to minimise the introduction of hazardous chemicals and microplastics, and prevent ghost fishing and the entanglement of endangered species. Moreover, it will enhance the mapping, tracking, and retrieval of ALDFG technologies. NETTAG+ will test these solutions in real conditions within Atlantic and Mediterranean countries.
The EU-funded SUBMERSE project aims to develop a world-class research instrument by integrating existing infrastructures like NREN, EPOS, and the Copernicus Marine service. It will use already installed, live telecommunications submarine optical fibers to gather state of polarisation (SoP1) and distributed acoustic sensor (DAS2) data. SUBMERSE will enable the continuous recording of data for research use supporting diverse user communities from various scientific and social disciplines, such as georisks, early warning for seismic/volcanic events, and the detection and protection of marine life. The project’s consortium, coordinated by the EFIS Centre, counts 24 organisations (18 full partner, 5 affiliated, 1 associated). SUBMERSE is set to run for 36 months.
The AI4Ports project aims to automate the detection of irregularities in underwater infrastructures at ports in the Azores – using Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Over 12 months, INESC TEC, the Fundação Gaspar Frutuoso, Portos dos Açores, and Trisolaris will collaborate on developing new solutions for the automatic identification of anomalies in underwater infrastructures; the initiative seeks to improve the safety, efficiency, and sustainability of port operations.
To achieve these goals, AI4Ports will use marine robots (ROVs) equipped with optical and sonar sensors to capture images and data from said structures, e.g., pillars and walls. This data will be used to build a database for training machine learning models, designed to assist in the automatic detection of cracks, fissures, and corrosion holes – not only identifying these anomalies but also assessing their severity.
In line with the Industrial Plan of the European Green Pact, the main objective of the AOWINDE project is to transform the offshore wind energy industry in the Galicia-North Portugal Euroregion, accelerating its development through public-private collaboration. During the duration of the project, technological tools will be designed and implemented to support the cross-border offshore wind energy value chain. Specialized training programs will also be created for professionals in the sector. In addition, outreach and promotion activities will be carried out to attract new players to the territory to invest in offshore wind energy.
The Aowinde project aims to position the Galicia-North Portugal Euroregion as a leader in the generation of clean and sustainable energy, thus contributing to the economic growth and sustainable development of the region.
The Aliança para a Transição Energética (ATE) aims to strengthen the competitiveness and resilience of companies in the energy sector through the creation of innovative, export-oriented products and solutions, based on technology and know-how developed and consolidated within the sector. Its goal is to position Portugal at the forefront of decarbonization and to foster an effective energy transition.
The ATE will make a significant and sustained contribution to national strategic objectives, such as increasing exports (€443M), boosting investment in R&D (€209.5M), reducing emissions (3.4 million tons of CO₂), and shifting the economy’s specialization profile (€552M in sales).
The Aliança para a Transição Energética involves a total of 55 companies, including 27 ENESIIs, who will create a truly structuring ecosystem for the Energy Transition. In addition to the planned PPS initiatives, this will also result in the creation of over 400 skilled jobs — totaling 706 — supported by a total investment of €342M over these four years.
Achieving climate neutrality by 2050 requires smarter use of marine space and more resilient renewable energy systems. The EU-SCORES project explores a hybrid approach to offshore energy production, combining wind, solar, and wave technologies to deliver continuous, space-efficient power generation at a lower cost per MWh.
By co-locating complementary energy systems — offshore photovoltaics with bottom-fixed wind turbines in Belgium, and wave energy with floating wind farms in Portugal — the project demonstrates how integrated solutions can stabilise energy supply, maximise infrastructure use, and accelerate the deployment of offshore renewables.
ILIAD is a Horizon Europe project focused on developing a data-driven, interoperable Digital Twin of the Ocean. By integrating diverse data streams—from satellites and sensors to models and citizen science—the project enables real-time simulation and forecasting of marine social-ecological systems.
This digital infrastructure will support the development of “what-if” scenarios to assess the impact of climate adaptation and mitigation strategies, contributing directly to the goals of the European Green Deal. ILIAD leverages advanced computing and semantically rich data structures to ensure seamless interaction between physical systems and virtual models.
The project also includes the creation of a marketplace for ocean intelligence, enabling access to raw and processed data, tools, plug-ins, and decision-support services for stakeholders across science, policy, and industry.
This project used environmental observations, experiments, and global data analysis in an interdisciplinary effort to produce reliable scientific data to better understand the interactions between climate change perturbations on the North Atlantic and Arctic microbial communities and their functions. Because microbiomes sustain crucial environmental functions that dictate for example oxygen, carbon dioxide and primary productivity balance in the Ocean, our scientific findings will help to understand processes of global significance and identify emerging risks as well as problems definition and prioritization. In particular, it will represent an important breakthrough regarding the predicted extent of Atlantification of Arctic Sea.
Offshore wind energy makes an important contribution to the decarbonisation of our society. As recent wind farms are being installed further away from the coast at deeper locations, they get more complex and the risk of operating and maintaining such offshore assets increases substantially. The EU-funded ATLANTIS project developed a pioneer pilot infrastructure capable of demonstrating key enabling robotic technologies for the inspection and maintenance of offshore wind farms. A large-scale pilot was operated and demonstrated by a strong collaboration between the research community and the industrial offshore energy ecosystem. This project intended to accelerate the adoption of robotic-based solutions by end-users, in particular, by highlighting the added-value of robotics to the safety and efficiency of O&M activities.
In earth systems, oceans represent an important element of equalization and normal functioning. Nowadays oceans are believed to represent perhaps the most important contribution to the current balance between all earth elements for a healthy and sustainable earth global system. However, oceans remain as the most remote and unexplored frontier among all earth elements. Oceanatmospheric interactions are nowadays believed to be at the heart of all earth vital signs and climatic behaviors, and therefore are essential to an accurate monitoring and understanding of earth systems, their changes and the results of human impacts. As the continuous acceleration of human systems complexity is expected, novel and disruptive ways to tackle this major challenge are urgent.
K2D addressed this challenge by proposing the development of a synergistic set of components, including electronic components and Autonomous Underwater Vehicles, that permit the cost-effective gathering of extensive and complete data from the oceans, including physical, chemical, biological and environmental variables. For that purpose acoustic information and environmental DNA were combined, as well as advanced Geoinformatics modeling hybridized with Artificial Intelligence tools to enrich geospatial and temporal information models to describe and anticipate oceans health patterns and human activities, mostly the ones more prone to hazards and extreme events. To close the loop, the same Geostatistics models can be used to create a continuum from deep-sea to near space, by integrating remote sensing and satellite information describing earth global systems in a holistic manner.
The principle aim of ProtoAtlantic was to develop and validate a model for the prototyping and exploitation of innovative ideas in the maritime sector in the Atlantic Area ProtoAtlantic developed a model for the prototyping and exploitation of innovative ideas in the maritime sector. The project focused on three well-defined sectors: Renewable Energy, Marine Robotics and Blue biotechnologies.
EMSO-PT is a European Large-Scale Research Infrastructure, composed of multidisciplinary underwater observatories and other supporting facilities for data processing, aimed at providing continuous scientific information on marine environmental processes related to the interaction between the geosphere, biosphere, and hydrosphere. EMSO-PT is made up of members from R&D institutions developing advanced instrumentation and technology, in line with national and European priorities, and is part of the European EMSO-ERIC initiative.
The FLY.PT project aimed to develop products and services with an integrated and unique global vision, based on a demonstrator of an urban and electric multimodal transportation system. This new transport system combined an autonomous electric vehicle and an autonomous aerial vehicle, allowing both horizontal and vertical mobility by coupling/decoupling a cabin. FLY.PT created the technology and knowledge base needed to address the ongoing air transport revolution, including technologies related to aircraft electrification and autonomous systems.
The consortium was led by one of the national industry’s major references, the Caetano Aeronautic company of the Salvador Caetano group, and has the participation (in an open innovation framework) of the largest companies and entities in the sector, through the involvement of the Portuguese Cluster for the Aeronautics, Space and Defense Industries (AED Cluster Portugal). FLY.PT also included 10 companies and 9 entities of the R&D system – including INESC TEC -, with wide national geographic coverage.
Of note is the high level of innovation associated with the project, both from the integrated demonstrators as well as the high tech themes, such as propulsion, artificial intelligence and avionics, batteries, innovative structures, design and new concepts of operation. The products, processes and services were developed in a logic of transverse mobilization of human resources, with vast curricula and experience in the development and implementation of R&D projects on the thematic areas covered by FLY.PT.
The NESSIE project, (“moNitoring offshorE StructureS with robotIc systems intEgration”) was promoted by A. Silva Matos Metalomecânica (Leading Copromotor), Composite Solutions and Antartic Module Yard (Business Copromotors), together with INESC TEC, FEUP and ISEP (ENESII), and aimed to research and develop a fleet of technological solutions to reduce the high costs of inspecting and monitoring underwater marine infrastructures. NESSIE represented an innovative vision that integrates underwater robots with heterogeneous systems to investigate the technicalscientific uncertainties, as well as the advantages that are rising from increasing the presence of these robotic platforms to multiple days.
NESSIE’s vision incorporated the autonomous and semi-permanent mobile robots with new technologies for visual inspection and continuous monitoring of underwater scenarios, the development of supporting systems to provide operational resources (energy, communication and security) for extending the presence of mobile robots in mission (from half a day to multiple days) and, finally, the development of a new mission platform to facilitate the deployment and recovery of specialized equipment at sea.
MARESye is a computer vision system that facilitates the monitoring and manipulation of objects in underwater environments. Technologically, the solution comprises a set of cameras, lasers, lighting and a proprietary software that controls the operation of the various components in order to collect information about the objects in very low visibility environments due to water turbidity. MARESye enables more efficient machinery operation in activities that lead to increased water turbidity such as deep mining, oil extraction or submerged structures monitoring. This technology has 4 main application industries aligned with 4 priority themes and respective topics of the National Strategy for Intelligent Specialization (ENEI), as well as with 4 priority areas and respective topic of the North Intelligent Specialization Strategy (RIS3). Due to its characteristics, MARESye is particularly well positioned to be marketed in autonomous (AUV) or remotely controlled (ROV) underwater vehicles. This is a global market that is expected to growth 4.5% between 2017 and 2022 and where key players use patents to protect their technologies with the aim of securing positions of sustainable competitive advantage. The analysis presented herein supports this funding request for an international patent application (PCT) and its respective national validations in the major world markets in order to boost MARESye technology economic return and impact on the society.
Deep sea research, due to the harsh environment, has been barely explored although contains a huge potential of economic exploitation of bio-resources due to the organisms and substances that can be found in these regions. The substances contained or produced by deep-sea organisms have interest due to the potential application in pharmaceutical and food industry. In spite of the great potential, it had been scarcely explored due to the high costs of production.
The project herein presented aimed to develop an isobaric mobile infrastructure able to collect deep-sea live organisms under conditions of high pressure, low temperature (or extremely high in the case of proximity to active volcanoes) and low luminosity. This mobile structure was able to transfer the living organisms to another chamber, mimicking at surface (1bar), the environment of the sea floor without modification of the relevant physical parameters. The system also allowed the maintenance of these organisms in controlled and easily accessible environments for scientific research purposes and to allow the use of the substances produced by them for the pharmaceutical industry.
Port XXI was an ESA funded project which aimed to identify and evaluate the deployment of transformative environmental monitoring and management services that could help ports minimize their environmental impact, while keeping operational costs contained by taking advantage of EARTH OBSERVATION, SATCOM and SAT NAV infrastructures, in combination with information gathered from other sources such as CCTV, data repositories, in situ sensors, mobile sensors, using autonomous robotic solutions and incorporating Big Data and AI techniques for automatic knowledge extraction.
The overall aim of the BIOREM project was the implementation of an innovative and environmental friendly solution to tackle with one of the most damaging sources of maritime pollution: spills of oil and marine fuels. This solution was based on the production of autochthonous microbial consortia with bioremediation capacity, and the adaptation of unmanned aerial vehicles for in-situ release of autochthonous microorganisms (bioaugmentation) and nutrients (biostimulation). By doing so, these systems can be used as first line responders to pollution incidents in a fast, efficient and low cost way. Such innovative solutions aimed to: (i) be environment-friendly, by using native organisms to naturally degrade oil spills, and thus avoiding the introduction of additional chemical or biological additives; (ii) integrate spill combat missions, by using unmanned aerial vehicles, which are able to operate under unfavourable and harsh conditions with low human intervention; (iii) increase the overall efficiency of the spill combat, by acting on defined targets and areas; (iv) decrease the overall time to reaction and mission costs, by using unmanned aerial vehicles, whose deployment is faster and less costly than using boats, planes or helicopters.
The GROW project aimed to develop a novel solution for timely long-range, high bitrate underwater wireless communications. The solution combines short-range wireless technologies (e.g., radio, wireless optical), intermediate AUVs as data mules, and long-range acoustic communications; the latter are used to control in real-time the range, bitrate, and latency of a data link between the AUV and the central station. A multidisciplinary research team was involved in GROW: the team from INESC TEC, with long experience in wireless networks and robotics, including the development of AUVs and navigation algorithms for marine robots; the team from IPMA, with vast know-how in marine geosciences, hazards characterization, and experience in marine observation and monitoring.
This De-Risk Action evaluated and developed, at a low TRL, prospective technology that in the future can lead to the development of a spectrometer for marine litter detection from space: an opportunity to develop innovative technology that could take advantage of Earth Observation satellite constellations to provide a continuous monitoring of earth oceans and coastal areas.
Marine litter is considered a global problem, and if no change occurs in the near future it will be even bigger by the end of 2030. Therefore this De-Risk activity followed a two-step technical approach: Acquisition of reliable marine litter data, using heterogeneous sensors (visible cameras, multispectral cameras, hyperspectral cameras in the VNIR and SWIR range) located at different altitudes, and using different systems, namely: satellite PRISMA and Sentinel 2 information, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) and manned aircraft; Processing of such information, leading to two valuable outcomes; one is machine learning methods to help classify marine litter using artificial intelligence (AI) in post processing; the other, the theoretical assessment and evaluation of compressive sensing techniques using tailored spectral bands, in view of its potential improved SNR, minimizing mass, volume and/or power, as a potential technique for high sensitivity satellite based plastic monitoring.
NetTag project aims to reduce and prevent marine litter derived from fisheries by working directly with fishers through an integrative preventive approach including: reducing lost gear by using new technologies (acoustic localisation system) that help fishermen to locate and recover lost gear; promoting better practices on the management of fishing waste through awareness raising actions organised by fishers associations for fishermen.
The onset of exogenous feeding is a critical developmental stage for marine fish larvae reared in aquaculture. At this point, most commercial fish species rely on live-feeds, which contain a suboptimal nutritional composition. The introduction of an inert diet nutritionally balanced normally occurs after a few weeks of larval development. This occurs because at the onset of exogenous feeding, commercial microdiets are poorly accepted, ingested and digested by fish larvae.
Project FEEDFIRST was comprised by an integrated solution that aimed at a successful introduction of inert microdiets at the onset of exogenous feeding of fish larvae reared in aquaculture. This solution was comprised by high-quality inert microdiets and a rearing tank that provides innovative hydraulic features. These tanks would allow a longer residence time of the diets in the water column, increasing their availability to the larvae, as well as self-cleaning properties to achieve a better sanitary condition in the rearing water. This integrated solution was presented by a consortium led by Sparos Lda, a pioneer SME for the development of novel nutritional solutions for the aquaculture market, also being composed by RIASEARCH, a novel SME with a high scientific and technological background, as well as the Instituto Superior de Economia and the Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores – Tecnologia e Ciência (INESC TEC), both public institutes that provided a high scientific background to the project, thereby increasing its innovative concept. The Feedfirst solution is a revolution in the growth and survival performance of marine fish larvae at the onset of exogenous feeding, reducing the dependence of live-prey during this developmental stage, ultimately targeting worldwide marine fish hatcheries at a commercialization tage.
The main objective of the SAIL project was to study atmospheric electricity and climate change, by collecting and measuring data on the atmosphere and the ocean, over a 371-day period. The project was cut short due to the COVID-19 Pandemic.
ATLAS created a dynamic new partnership between multinational industries, SMEs, governments and academia to assess the Atlantic’s deep-sea ecosystems and Marine Genetic Resources to create the integrated and adaptive planning products needed for sustainable Blue Growth. ATLAS gathered diverse new information on sensitive Atlantic ecosystems (incl. VMEs and EBSAs) to produce a step-change in our understanding of their connectivity, functioning and responses to future changes in human use and ocean climate. This was possible because ATLAS took innovative approaches to its work and interweaved its objectives by placing business, policy and socioeconomic development at the forefront with science.
ATLAS not only used trans-Atlantic oceanographic arrays to understand and predict future change in living marine resources, but enhanced their capacity with new sensors to make measurements directly relevant to ecosystem function. The ATLAS team had the track record needed to meet the project’s ambitions and has already developed a programme of 25 deep-sea cruises, with more pending final decision. These cruises studied a network of 12 Case Studies spanning the Atlantic including sponge, cold-water coral, seamount and mid-ocean ridge ecosystems. The team had an unprecedented track record in policy development at national, European and international levels. The annual ATLAS Science-Policy Panels in Brussels took the latest results and Blue Growth opportunities identified from the project directly to policy makers.
Finally, ATLAS composed a strong trans-Atlantic partnership in Canada and the USA where both government and academic partners would interact closely with ATLAS through shared cruises, staff secondments, scientific collaboration and work to inform Atlantic policy development. ATLAS was created and designed with our North-American partners to foster trans-Atlantic collaboration and the wider objectives of the Galway Statement on Atlantic Ocean Cooperation.
The overall aim of the ROSM project was the implementation of an innovative solution based on heterogeneous autonomous vehicles to tackle maritime pollution (in particular, oil spills). These solutions were based on native microbial consortia with bioremediation capacity, and the adaptation of air and surface autonomous vehicles for in-situ release of autochthonous microorganisms (bioaugmentation) and nutrients (biostimulation). By doing so, these systems could be used as the first line of the responder to pollution incidents from several origins that may occur inside ports, around industrial and extraction facilities, or during transport activities, in a fast, efficient and low-cost way.
The project included the development of a team of autonomous vehicles able to carry, as payload, native organisms to naturally degrade oil spills (avoiding the introduction of additional chemical or biological additives), the development of a multi-robot system able to provide a first line responses to oil spill incidents under unfavourable and harsh conditions with low human intervention, and then a decentralized cooperative planning with the ability to coordinate an efficient oil spill combat. Field tests have been performed in Leixões Harbour in Porto and Medas, Portugal, with a simulated oil spill and validated the decentralized coordinated task between the autonomous surface vehicle (ASV) ROAZ and the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).
SpilLess aimed to develop and implement new and viable solutions to tackle one of the most damaging sources of maritime pollution: oil spills. These solutions would be marketable services and products based on the production of native microbial consortia with bioremediation capacity and on the adaptation of unmanned autonomous vehicles for in-situ contamination combat. By combining biotechnology with robotics, SpilLess pretended to create a novel approach that can be used as a first-line response to pollution incidents in a fast, efficient and low-cost way.
This project aimed at creating solid and productive links in the global field of marine science and technology between INESC TEC and established leading research European institutions, capable of enhancing the scientific and technological capacity of INESC TEC and linked institutions (as well as the capacity of partnering institutions involved in the twinning action), helping raising its staff’s research profile and its recognition as an European maritime research center of excellence.
These objectives will be fulfilled through a set of measures: summer schools; winter schools; short-term scientific meetings; Long-term Staff visits; Networking meetings; Workshops; Conferences; technology transfer workshops with stakeholders; and other dissemination activities. By tackling the call challenge with the specific topic of deep sea technologies, STRONGMAR was aligned with several National and European priorities (“The Portuguese Strategy for Smart Specialisation” (2014); Portuguese “National Ocean Strategy” (2013); EU Commission’s Atlantic Strategy (2011), etc.), establishing a consolidation path of INESC TEC’s strategy for the sea.
The SIDENAV project aimed to develop a demonstrator capable of validating and applying the technology developed under the TURTLE project, which consists in the creation of a relocatable underwater mobile infrastructure that, on the one hand, ensures the tracking of underwater equipment and industrial machines in an operating situation (e.g. infrastructure inspection, underwater mining, etc.) and, on the other hand, is able to monitor the impact of such operations on the environment.
The Hub Azul Leixões (HAL) is one of the infrastructures of the Hub Azul network, formed by a group of organisations led by INESC TEC, with the goal of developing and testing ocean technologies in support of a sustainable Blue Economy.
HAL also contributes to the monitoring and management of marine ecosystems and has various capabilities aimed at promoting the training of highly qualified human resources for maritime activities, meeting the needs of the Blue Economy market, and addressing trends toward new, more digital and environmentally friendly economic models.