Over the course of three years, the Platform for Long-lasting Observation of Marine Ecosystems project (PLOME) will design a non-invasive, modular platform to collect essential data for the scientific community to better monitor and manage marine ecosystems. Led by the University of Girona (UdG), the scientific team includes the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech (UPC), the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB), the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), the Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM-CSIC) and Iqua Robotics SL. The project has a budget of 1.5 million euros from the Spanish State Research Agency and the Next Generation EU plan.

Specifically, the project proposes to develop a set of independent systems consisting of fixed stations on the seabed, submarine vehicles and surface vehicles that work together and autonomously to collect data. All the systems are equipped with batteries and communication systems. Underwater vehicles can be docked to charge batteries and surface vehicles can operate by extracting energy from the environment.

This whole set of systems constitutes a platform that can monitor an area for several weeks and up to a month without requiring human intervention. Then the systems are collected and maintained, data are extracted, batteries are charged and the platform can be deployed again to resume monitoring in another area.

The project aims to advance the current methodology, in which data are mainly extracted while a human team is conducting an oceanographic campaign. The PLOME platform allows long-term monitoring with real-time communication to better keep track of the ecosystem.

Since the systems are operating for many days, artificial intelligence is used to detect species and to adapt and optimise seabed monitoring accordingly. Researchers will also receive a summary of real-time detections to let them know what is going on and allow them to reset any parameters to better use the remaining days of data collection.

Experiments along the Catalan coast
During the three-year project, three experiments will be conducted along the Catalan coast. The first one will take place off the coast of Sant Feliu de Guíxols in 2023. The technologies developed will for the first time work together to collect data from the seabed. The other two experiments will be conducted during 2024. One will consist of a deep validation (300-500 metres) in a marine protected area near Barcelona using an oceanographic boat. The monitoring systems will be validated under real conditions for several days, supervised and operated from the ship.

The last one will be carried out off the coast of Vilanova i la Geltrú to validate all the systems at shallow depths over a week without interruption. The platform will be connected to the OBSEA underwater observatory to provide real-time monitoring of all the systems to verify that they are working properly.

“With PLOME we want to consolidate the use of autonomous underwater vehicles as seabed survey tools that do not require a complete human team and a dedicated infrastructure to operate them,” explains Marc Carreras, a researcher of the UdG’s Computer Vision and Robotics (VICOROB) research group and coordinator of the project. “Autonomous vehicles allow working for one or more days, analysing and making decisions to obtain right data.”

“It is one of the technologies required to properly manage marine ecosystems, as it allows scalable vehicle operation,” adds VICOROB researcher. The group has extensive experience in national and international research projects related to autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), such as the development of the AUV Girona 500/1000 and Sparus II, used by several international research groups. In addition to leading the project, VICOROB will adapt the autonomous underwater vehicles for experimental validation.

The ICM, for its part, will calculate ecological indicators as a synthetic measure of marine ecosystem health and recovery. “Based on the data obtained through the automatic processing of images from robotic platforms, we will calculate species abundance and global biodiversity,” explains ICM researcher Jacopo Aguzzi.

The UPC’s Technological Development Centre for Remote Acquisition and Data Processing Systems (SARTI) will design the fixed seabed observation stations. With over 10 years of experience after deploying the OBSEA underwater observatory, the SARTI group will design the landers, which are the stations that will host instruments such as cameras and sensors, surface communication devices and platform recovery elements. “Landers allow measuring marine parameters at a fixed location and linking the communications of the entire platform with the surface,” elaborates UPC researcher Joaquín del Río, who is affiliated with the Vilanova i la Geltrú School of Engineering (EPSEVG).

The UIB’s most relevant contribution to this project is the generation and implementation of artificial intelligence algorithms to analyse the images obtained by the cameras on board the autonomous vehicles and fixed stations for the purpose of detecting, identifying, sizing and quantifying marine species.

The UPM will focus on managing underwater acoustic communication and satellite and/or GSM communications. Middleware will be developed to provide easier communication between all the agents (vehicles, stations, ships, control station, etc.). Middleware allows to manage all the communication devices in the same way by providing a high-level layer that simplifies using them, without requiring the user to have any deep knowledge. The works will be developed by the UPM’s Research into Instrumentation and Applied Acoustics (I2A2) research group.

Finally, the Girona-based company IQUA Robotics will develop mapping algorithms based on the data collected by lasers, video cameras and acoustic cameras. Created in 2016, IQUA Robotics designs, develops and sells autonomous underwater vehicles and other related technologies. It is the only company in the consortium.