The new Robotics Unit brings together 42 researchers who believe that this merger will increase and improve activities such as the transfer and commercialisation of Portuguese technology to rapidly expanding markets, such as Brazil.

With regards to Portugal, the Robotics Unit will combine competencies to respond to the needs of the maritime economy (maritime security, the ship building industry, pleasure boating and pleasure fishing, conservation and transformation of fish stocks) and develop R&D that can be applied to automated technology for the industrial equipment market.

TriMARES can be highlighted as one of the many projects developed by the two institutions. TriMARES is an underwater robot capable of monitoring dam structures and silting in the basins in real time, with high precision and to a degree of accuracy of centimetres. This underwater robotic technology, developed by INESC Porto, is an upgrade from the robot MARES that is being used to monitor the water quality along Portuguese coastlines by the Portuguese company Grupo Águas de Portugal. This Project is the first example of a successful international partnership for INESC Porto in the area of robotics and it will be the first joint international consultancy project for the new Unit in Brazil.

Eduardo Silva, from the Laboratory of Autonomous Systems (ISEP), states that the challenges are “big and their configuration is complex. This means that it is necessary to have a team which is able to respond to all of the parts of the problem”. He is wholly convinced that this union provides the conditions that are necessary for research in this area to evolve. António Moreira, from the Robotics and Intelligent Systems Unit at INESC Porto, guarantees that there are “few groups in the world that have both the equipment and the diversity of this new unit”. 

Semana Informática, 18th March 2011