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Portuguese researchers develop maritime search and rescue technology
A team from the Institute for Systems and Computer Engineering of Porto – Science and Technology (INESC TEC) is leading the development of technologies to support search and rescue operations at sea in the context of the European project ICARUS – Integrated Components for Assisted Rescue and Unmanned Search operations. The maritime component will be demonstrated in Portugal in the summer of 2015.
The initiative gathers 24 partners from ten countries with the goal of creating robotic devices which can be used in search and rescue operations in land and at sea. The project began in 2012 and will now enter its final year. Next year, there will be a demonstration of the tools applied to the sea in a simulated disaster scenario off of Lisbon’s naval base.
“The ICARUS
will not bring solutions to everything, but it is an
important contribution to make rescue
operations faster and more effective, and several institutions are interested in it”, says Aníbal
Matos, one of the
researchers responsible for the
project at INESC TEC.
In Portugal, a robot life raft was developed to aid the specialised teams working “in adverse weather conditions, when the sea is heavy, or at night. These robots are capable of moving, sensing and avoiding obstacles using radars, lasers, acoustic systems and cameras. “They also have a system to automatically inflate the rafts only when they closer to the victim”, Aníbal Matos explains.
Infrared system for detecting people
The INESC TEC team also created a methodology for detecting people using an infrared camera,
which can be integrated
in sea and aerial vehicles. “The camera detects thermal
radiation”, the researcher said, which is “similar to the technology commonly used in surveillance systems
in buildings”, he adds.
The process of
developing these technologies
was supported by the Portuguese Navy, and the NATO
Marine Research Centre. The
devices developed by the different countries have
been submitted to tests and are being integrated into a control computer system.
Some of the sub-systems developed
as part of the ICARUS are likely to be marketed, but for this, after the project is concluded, it will be necessary for industrial partners
to invest. “If two or three products have
a commercial application that’s already a good result”, the INESC TEC researcher reveals.
The ICARUS is the result of a challenge
launched within a European Union call, following the last
major world disasters such as the tsunami in Thailand and the wreck of the Costa Concordia.
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