'Coffee with EUMR' Webinar Series

The EUMarineRobots (EUMR) project is glad to announce the series of webinars “Coffee with EUMR” starting in February! These webinars will present the best of the research performed within the scope of EUMR and related initiatives. Short talks by early career researchers are envisioned to happen biweekly covering all EUMR partners. The first talk titled “Augmented reality techniques for aided remote underwater manipulation based on real time 3D perception” will be given by Dr. Matheus Laranjeira from IFREMER on Friday, 12 February 2021 at 10 AM CET. 

To join the meeting, please follow: https://ifremer.webex.com/ifremer-en/j.php?MTID=m4c6e8ecd3978224ae31caac62c291c9e

The abstract of the talk and a short speaker’s biography: 

Abstract 

This talk addresses the potential benefits and challenges of the use of augmented reality (AR) techniques for the exploration of underwater environments with remotely operated vehicles. New AR functions are designed in order to improve the perception and interaction with the environment. Measurements can be made in real time to assess the dimensions, size, surface and 3D structure of underwater objects prior to sample collection. The overall perception of the explored zone can be enhanced through the display of contour lines enabling a quick evaluation of the terrain irregularities. The teleoperation of robotic arms is eased thanks to the knowledge of the terrain structure. Basic tasks can be automated and useful information (such as possible contact points) can be displayed to the human operator. 

The key to such concepts is in the implementation of real-time 3D visual terrain models built from the images acquired by the vehicle exploring its unknown surroundings. Navigation and image data are thus fused in order to provide user-friendly displays and precise environment perception for the execution of robotic intervention tasks. 

Matheus Laranjeira – Short biography 

Hi! I am currently conducting post-doctoral researches on augmented reality for aided underwater operations at Ifremer. My academic formation is based on a double graduation in robotics and electrical engineering, respectively achieved at the ENSTA Bretagne (France, 2014) and at the Federal University of Bahia (Brazil, 2015). My end-of-study project was carried out at ECA Robotics on the construction of underwater mosaics from imagery and navigation data acquired by an autonomous vehicle. This work led to my first scientific publication and I pursued an academic career with a PhD degree obtained at the University of Toulon (2019) on the visual servoing of deformable objects applied to the shape control of underwater tethers.