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.

Future human activity on the lunar surface will use 3D printing to build infrastructure from lunar soil using the Sun as the only source of energy. Today this technology is considered disruptive; tomorrow it will be the standard. The RegoLight project will investigate the sintering process of lunar regolith simulants by means of concentrated sun light in order to prepare for future lunar missions for building infrastructure (leveled terrain, dust shelters, launch pads etc.) and structural components for lunar habitats. Solar sintering of regolith is currently at TRL3 , being able to build a regolith ‘brick’ in a laboratory set-up with a moving table in a solar furnace. RegoLight aims at enhancing this specific additive layer manufacturing technique –which seems very promising for lunar applications since it does not involve any consumables– by further characterizing the parameters for sintering different types of regolith and by developing a movable printing head capable both of pointing the concentrated solar beam at the required spot and of deploying incrementally additional layers of regolith in order to continue with the additive building process. Based on the mechanical properties of solar sintered regolith architectural scenarios and applications will be developed, taking into account the benefits of additive layer manufacturing and novel construction concepts for lunar gravity. This detailed Finite Element Modeling will provide a first insight into lunar architectural scenarios using this technology: With a concurrent engineering approach sample structures will be printed having been derived from ‘big picture’ scenarios and bottom up approaches at the same time. The project objective is the development of a regolith solar sintering device breadboard which will be validated in a relevant environment (TRL5). The parts printed in a thermal vacuum chamber will undergo mechanical properties tests to build a database and FEM analysis for validation of the concepts.

Underwater operations (e.g. oil industry) are demanding and costly activities for which ROV based setups are often deployed in addition to deep divers – contributing to operations risks and costs cutting. However the operation of a ROV requires significant off-shore dedicated manpower – such a setup typically requires a crew consisting of: (1) an intendant, (2) an operator, and (3) a navigator. This is a baseline, and extra staffing is often provisioned. Furthermore, customers representatives often wish to be physically present at the off-shore location in order to advise on, or to observe the course of the operations. Associated costs are high. In order to reduce the burden of operations, DexROV will work out more cost effective and time efficient ROV operations, where manned support is in a large extent delocalized onshore (i.e. from a ROV control center), possibly at a large distance from the actual operations - thus with latencies in the communication. As a main strategy to mitigate them, DexROV will develop a real time simulation environment to accommodate operators’ requests on the onshore side with no delays. The simulated environment will exploit cm accuracy 3D models of the environment built online by the ROV, using data acquired with underwater sensors (3D sonar and vision based). A dedicated cognitive engine will analyse user’s control requests as done in the simulated environment, and will turn them into primitives that the ROV can execute autonomously in the real environment, despite the communication latencies. Effective user interfaces will be developed for dexterous manipulation, including a double advanced arm and hand force feedback exoskeleton. The ROV will be equipped with a pair of new force sensing capable manipulators and dexterous end-effectors: they will be integrated within a modular skid. The outcomes of the project will be integrated and evaluated in a series of tests and evaluation campaigns, culminating with a realistic offshore trial.