smartuw

Idea

Naval mines and ammunition/UXO laid and fired during wars at large scale. They cause many disasters and casualty both during and after wars. 

Many fresh and salty water places  such as rivers, lakes, seas and oceans are full of these dangerous devices.

Both in wartime and in the post-war period, it is very important to know the exact position of these dangerous places.

Often swimmers and fishermens notice the dangerous objects in the water and afterwards they try to report them to the authorities.

MineTracker: We have designed and implemented a service that combines the capabilities of underwater autonomous vehicles with GPS-based satellite positioning, and social activities. Our solution allows machines equipped with the minesweeper smart add-on system and persons (basically anyone) to report and track mine and UXO related hazards online.

The main elements of the MineTracking system are:

A Minesweeper smart add-on system (hardware and software) that can be connected to an autonomous underwater vehicle and is able to effectively search and report underwater mines. The Oubot underwater vehicle platform has been used as a proof-of-concept underwater vehicle.The minesweeper smart add-on system  is a microprocessor driven towed hardware extension and it is able to detect even small and medium size iron/steel targets.  Its detection area make the detector ideal for large area scanning tasks. It logs permanently the magnetic readouts. The software part of the add-on is able to infer the presence of naval mines from camera images and from other environmental signals (e.g. magnetic field changes).

With the combination of the Minessweeper and Oubot underwater vehicle large area can be explored. This can be offered such a service

MineTracker online web server map with the possibility to display the status and location of registered naval mines and UXOs.

An online data entry system through which new underwater mines can be registered in the MineTracker database.

The MineTracker online server is capable to send warning signal to the online user if a registered naval mine or UXO is in a close proximity.

The system also includes an Satellite image segmentation module that can detect and track freely floating naval mines (very important to track such moving explosive objects in the case of currents). For such service a really high-resolution satellite image source is required

The collected data can be (re)used by authorities to initiate robot assisted naval mine removal.

EU space technologies

MineTracker is using GPS to define precise location of the naval mines and UXOs

MineTracker can use satellite communication to send alarm signal to the user if a naval mine or UXO is in close proximity.

MineTracker can use satellite communication to receive reports of newly located naval mines or UXOs.

MineTracker can use high-resolution satellite images to track the movment of the freely floating naval mines.  (this is crucial in bad weather conditions, and during low visibility /night time.

We are solving the "2. Making the seas more secure" challenge, and additionally we are targeting other burning challenges such as Environmental protection  ( serious pollution problems caused by these objects).

Team

The team builds up mainly from talented engineers:

Tersztenyak Balázs. :           Programming, image processing, AI

Biricz Bence:                          Programming, firmware, uC

Burian Sandor:                       HW development, server side development

Kozlovszky Miklos:                System design, management