SUNBIO brings together a significant variety of disciplines, aiming at exploiting them to form a set of ‘technology enablers’ that will facilitate the delivery of the envisioned services through a holistic framework, comprising Underwater Engineering, Mathematics and Analytics, Computer Science, Archaeology, Chemistry, further decomposed in: (i) Naval engineering and design; (ii) trustworthy data analytics and relevant intelligence (ML/AI frameworks); (iii) Chemical measurement and spectroscopic methods for sensing, (iv) Navigation principles and compliance, (v) Communication and remote operation. These disciplines will be exploited to set up a number of complementary Technology Enablers (also described in detail in Sect.1.2.1-1.2.2); these enablers will be the basis for the SUNBIO envisioned services, that will lead to efficiently applied fully autonomous and in situ sensing, monitoring services. SUNBIO aims at ensuring that the pathway towards robust monitoring principles and practices, is designed always having ‘human in the loop’ in terms of usability and acceptance of deployed technologies, given the fact that trustworthiness is a key factor towards the exploitation of the envisioned set of services.

The proposition in this project is to use autonomous platforms for remote monitoring and chemical mapping of underwater heritage sites, such as AUVs (Autonomous Underwater Vehicles), BUOYs (Unmanned Surface Vehicles) and ROVs (remote operated vehicles). A swarm of self-coordinated AUVs will be responsible to monitor, survey and scan the heritage sites for detecting/identifying and monitor degradation, state of the UW surrounding site, possible intervention actions for alarming conditions etc. The swarm of AUVs will embed high edge processing capacity to support operational autonomy, dynamic path planning, dynamic sample-strategy planning and coordinated-swarming towards overall low energy consumption and long mission endurance, according to the project mission goals. The proposed swarming concept foresees building common underwater consensus of the cultural site, through periodic bilateral communication between AUVs to mutually achieve the overall common surveying goal; while the mother BUOY will be responsible to collect and deeply analyze raw AUV information to provide enhanced site situation awareness insights to the external human supervisor/user. Furthermore, the BUOY will be equipped with renewable solar collectors to ensure continuous power availability and reduced mission’s footprint, enough to support the overall mission energy needs (AUV will be periodically powered through BUOY). The supervisor/user will be located in a remote monitoring station, onshore, to allow periodic mission lifecycle management and general overview of the whole system situation based on real-time visual analytic mechanisms

Nature uses foam or sponge-like structures in various organisms for purposes like shock absorption, noise reduction, and vibration compensation in a remarkable example of evolutionary adaptation and functional design. On the other hand, many products still rely on non-sustainable materials of fossil-based origin, for example foams and elastomeric used for vibratory motion, sound, harshness, energy, and shock-impact absorption in industries such as automotive, aerospace and marine. Example of such Noise Vibration and Harshness (NVH) materials are rubber and engineering resins. Bio.3DGREEN develops and demonstrates a novel manufacturing approach for a cost-effective bio-inspired platform of bio-based components based on graphene foam (GF) to meet the industrial needs, i.e. vibration, sound and shock-impact absorption and durability in extreme conditions. Bio.3DGREEN democratizes graphene technology and enables the unscalable fabrication of graphene-based components of complex geometries to be demonstrated at TRL 6 through a high throughput, laser-based Additive Manufacturing (AM) procedure. The procedure is bio-inspired, mimicking structures such as the human bone, and is based solely on bio-based graphene system with vegetable oil as the raw material, resulting in carbon-positive manufacturing of the new components. Bio.3DGREEN demonstrates the superior bio-based GF parts in four different industries, aiming to drive the optimization of the new manufacturing approach through an application-driven approach: Automotive suspension systems & isolation panels, aerospace applications and quiet shipping. Bio.3DGREEN achieves a multi-disciplinary approach to develop, optimize, and improve smart manufacturing application-driven, bio-based GF components, also considering the performance of current materials used, their cost, market size, wastage and recyclability, sustainability of manufacturing process, inclusion in Europe’s circular economy and LCA, LCC aspects.

Many of the challenges faced by small and medium sized EU shipyards can be addressed by improving their productivity for fabricating new, high technology vessels and increasing their access to the specialist repair and maintenance market. Friction Stir Welding (FSW) is a high integrity, low distortion, environmentally benign, welding technique, which was previously investigated in FP7 project HILDA (High Integrity Low Distortion Assembly) and recommended for shipbuilding due to its high quality and suitability for automation. A recent break-through in the tooling material available for FSW now shows potential to enable this process for welding of steel structures (traditionally it has only been possible to use FSW in aluminium) – this represents a huge opportunity to improve the productivity of European shipyards. In RESURGAM, will combine FSW with the new tool material to deliver: • The introduction of low cost friction stir welding (FSW) systems for steel that can be retrofitted to their existing CNC machines; • The introduction of AI enabled, robotic FSW systems capable of making underwater weld repairs. These fabrication and repair capabilities, backed by the secure, digital Industry 4.0 infrastructure and techniques already in widespread use in the automotive and aerospace industries, will facilitate the rapid, coordinated but distributed modular manufacture of ships and watercraft throughout Europe. Practically, this will allow ships damaged anywhere in the world will have the option of being repaired in place without the need to travel to the nearest dry dock. This will allow ship owners to choose the most suitable yards to conduct their repairs rather than the nearest, and the repairs may be undertaken by yards with no dry dock of their own thus significantly increasing the number of yards able to undertake such work. All of this will implemented by the European shipyards and Naval architects in Europe.

Battery-powered AUVs have been used to study the seabed without the requirement of a human operator. Their operational endurance is limited by the available battery charge. Gliders, an AUV subclass, use small changes in their buoyancy to move like a profiling float. By using their wings, gliders can convert the vertical motion to horizontal, propelling themselves forward with very low power consumption. Hence, mission duration can be extended to months and to thousands of kilometers. However, gliders are suited for a particular set of missions involving relatively basic measurements and seabed mapping cannot be performed due to their inherent inability to cruise in a straight line. A surface support vessel is standard practice for launch and recovery of AUVs. The requirement to have a support vessel adds to the overall mission cost. Therefore higher endurance is needed in AUV platforms in order to bring mission costs down and improve the ocean exploration capability. The ENDURUNS project will deliver a step-change in AUV technology by implementing a novel hybrid design power by hydrogen fuel cell. An Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) will support the operation of the AUV, providing geotagging and data transmission capability to and from the Control Centre on shore.