Universitat de Girona

Spain

                   

The Universitat de Girona is a public institution devoted to excellence in teaching and research and to participating in the progress and development of society through the creation, transmission, diffusion and criticism of knowledge related to sciences, technology, humanities, social sciences and arts.

Role

The Universitat de Girona is in charge for the WP2 (Reinforcement of Scientific and Technological Potential) and is involved in all the work packages of the project.

The Universitat de Girona brings to the consortium its experience in underwater robotics, control and navigation. With active and recognized excellence in the areas of underwater image (and acoustic image) processing, SLAM, navigation, control and design of underwater robotic systems it will foster the development of skills in the control and navigation of systems in the challenging deep sea and oceanic environments.

R&D Centres

Computer Vision and Robotics Research Group (ViCOROB)

ViCOROB is a research institute at the Universitat de Girona specialized in computer vision and robotics. ViCOROB has a strong experience in the design and development of hovering AUV prototypes with high-resolution image mapping capabilities, in particular, advanced image processing techniques for the 2D and 3D mapping of the seafloor, as well as with the fusion of these techniques with navigation data coming from state of the art navigation sensors (DVL, gyros, USBL) together with global optimization techniques to face large-scale maps.

Map based navigation and Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) of underwater robots using both acoustics and/or video images is currently one of the main topics of research. ViCOROB has also a long experience in intelligent control architectures and has contributed in mission control systems, behaviour based architectures, robot learning and path planning for AUVs. Finally, the group has expertise in mechatronics and software integration.

Girona Underwater Vision and Robotics Research Centre (CIRS)

CIRS is part of ViCOROB and is a member of the TECNIO network of excellence in Catalonia region. CIRS is a leader team in the research and development of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) for accurate seafloor mapping and light intervention, with more than 20 years of experience.