Coordinated Ocean Observations

Bio-geochemical processes in the upper water-column driven by physical and biological forcings such as fronts, internal waves, wind-driven upwelling, plumes, blooms and anoxic zones, cover large spatial and temporal scales, from hundreds of Sq km across hours to weeks. To observe and characterize such dynamic ocean phenomena we need multiple platforms across differing levels of synopticity. To enable this, we have leveraged the efforts at LSTS in Porto to work towards building a system of systems, which can be used to control heterogenous robotic assets across space and time. This is ongoing work and builds on our efforts on onboard autonomy and the lab’s dominant strength in networked robotics. This effort has recently moved to include the use of Small Satellites (SmallSat) as space borne single sensor instruments looking at the ocean across multiple orbital planes. This has resulted in starting a SmallSat project based on a strategic roadmap to chart out the build up of such vehicles to augment in-situ observations, across biological (optical) and physical measurements.

Publications

José Pinto and Maria Costa and Renato Mendes and Keila Lima and Paulo Dias and João Pereira and Manuel Ribeiro and Renato Campos and Maria Paola Tomasino and Catarina Magalhães and Francisco L\`opez Castej\`on and Javier Gilabert and Adriana M. Santos Ferreira and José C. B. da Silva and Paulo Relvas and Trent Lukaczyk and Kay Arne Skarpnes and Emlyn Davies and Alexander Chekalyuk and Bruno Loureiro and Ian G. Brosnan and Jing Li and João Borges de Sousa and Kanna Rajan, Coordinated Robotic Exploration of Dynamic Open Ocean Phenomena, Field Robotics, Special Issue, vol. 2, pp. 843–-871, 2022 cite pdf

M. J. Costa and J. Pinto and P. S. Dias and J. Pereira and K. Lima and M. Ribeiro and J. B. Sousa and T. Lukaczyk and R. Mendes and M. P. Tomasino and C. Magalhães and I. Belkin and F. Lopez-Castejon and J. Gilabert and K. Skarpnes and M. Ludvigsen and Kanna Rajan and Z. Mirmalek and A. Chekalyuk, Field Report: Exploring Fronts with Multiple Robots, 2018 IEEE/OES Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Workshop (AUV), pp. 1-7, 2018 cite pdf

Ferreira, António Sérgio and Costa, Maria and Py, Frédéric and Pinto, José and Silva, Mónica A. and Nimmo-Smith, Alex and Johansen, Tor Arne and de Sousa, João Borges and Rajan, Kanna, Advancing multi-vehicle deployments in oceanographic field experiments, Autonomous Robots, 2018 cite url

Sousa, Lara L. and López-Castejón, Francisco and Gilabert, Javier and Relvas, Paulo and Couto, Ana and Queiroz, Nuno and Caldas, Renato and Dias, Paulo Sousa and Dias, Hugo and Faria, Margarida and Ferreira, Filipe and Ferreira, António Sérgio and Fortuna, João and Gomes, Ricardo Joel and Loureiro, Bruno and Martins, Ricardo and Madureira, Luis and Neiva, Jorge and Oliveira, Marina and Pereira, João and Pinto, José and Py, Frederic and Queirós, Hugo and Silva, Daniel and Sujit, P. B. and Zolich, Artur and Johansen, Tor Arne and de Sousa, João Borges and Rajan, Kanna, Integrated Monitoring of Mola mola Behaviour in Space and Time, PLOS ONE, vol. 11.8, pp. 1-24, 2016 cite url pdf

J. B. de Sousa and J. Pereira and J. Pinto and Paulo Claro Lourenfo and João Madaleno Galocha and J. Fontes and M. Silva and K. Rajan and T. A. Johansson and J. Alves and A. Munafò and K. Pelekanakis and R. Petroccia and M. Carreiro Silva and M. Incze, Rapid Environmental Picture Atlantic exercise 2015: A field report, OCEANS 2016 MTS/IEEE Monterey, pp. 1-6, 2016 cite pdf

K. Rajan and J. Gilabert and T.A. Johansen and J. Sousa, A Case for Ocean Observing SmallSats, whitepaper, 2016 cite pdf

K. Rajan and T.A. Johansen and A. S\oresen and R. Birkeland, A Roadmap for a SmallSat Program, whitepaper, 2016 cite pdf

André G.C. Guerra and Frederico Francisco and Jaime Villate and Fernando Aguado Agelet and Orfeu Bertolami and Kanna Rajan, On small satellites for oceanography: A survey, Acta Astronautica, vol. 127, pp. 404 - 423, 2016 cite url pdf