Centre for Robotics and Autonomous Systems (CRAS)

CRAS' facilities comprise robotics labs and the field robotics mobile lab, which are used for scientific and technological testing, acquisition of data sets, experimental runs and evaluation.

The robotics labs have equipment and tools required for integration of payload system on-board of robotic platforms (at the mechanical, electrical, and computational levels); besides, they are also equipped with two water tanks, where underwater systems can be tested, with the following dimensions (L x W x D, in meters): 10 x 6 x 5 and 4.5 x 4.5 x 2.

Among others, these labs are suitable for evaluation of underwater electronic equipment, underwater navigation systems and control strategies; underwater sensor integration and evaluation; underwater communications testing; developments in advanced perception systems for localization and mapping; and teleoperation training.

The field robotics mobile lab is equipped with acoustic ground truth system for non GPS positioning, underwater communication systems, surface Wi-Fi infrastructure, physical and chemical sensors for probe calibration, and support vessels. This mobile lab is used for evaluation and testing of electronic equipment, navigation systems, control strategies, sensor response, communications, advanced perception systems for localization and mapping, and behavioural modelling and evaluation of marine systems.

Centre for Applied Photonics (CAP)

CAP’s facilities comprise the laboratory for sensing technologies and the laboratory for imaging technologies, which have state of the art equipment and tools for the design, fabrication and test of fibre optic based sensing systems.

The laboratory for sensing technologies enables fabrication, test and characterization of optical fibre sensors for detecting and measuring several physical (strain, temperature, vibration, salinity, electric current), chemical (O2, Methane, CO2, pH, heavy metal) and biological (toxin, bacteria) parameters. It has the capability of fabricating different fibre optic devices (fibre Bragg gratings, long period gratings, tapers, couplers and interferometers), and also to use coating systems (which allow the exploration of new functional materials, like thin films and nanostructured materials, with enhanced sensing properties), thus providing a great versatility in the design of new optical sensing systems.

A range of optical sources, spectrum analysers and laser scanning units allow to test and develop new interrogation systems for real time remote operation using interferometry, absorption spectroscopy (NIR) and fluorescence. A diversity of test facilities is available to characterize the sensors response to mechanical parameters (strain, temperature, vibration), electrical current, gases, and dissolved and volatile chemicals.

CAP has access to a shared 200 square meter clean room (ISO6 and ISO7), with a controlled environment in terms of temperature (20ºC ± 1ºC) and humidity (50% RH ± 5% RH). It is used for micro and nano-scale device manufacturing, and is equipped with systems for coating (PECVD, sputtering, thermal evaporation, electron beam, ion beam, polymer coating and spin-coating), lithography (mask aligner, spinning, laser direct writing) and characterization (microscopy, profilometry).

The laboratory for imaging technologies comprises advanced imaging systems for structural and spectral analysis (functional and analytical characterization), such as, Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) systems, hyperspectral systems based on compressive sensing technologies, LIDAR and imaging LIDAR systems.