Spoke 3 marine ecorobotics in action with NEPTUNE™: the story of the second mission in the Portofino Marine Protected Area

On February 20, the NEPTUNE™ project achieved an important project advancement, within the “second mission” in Liguria, after a first mission in the summer 2024 in Sicily.
The aim of the activity was to acquire marine data, videos and photos, testing the effectiveness of the instrumentation developed in the field of marine ecorobotics.

The instrumentation used in underwater explorations was entirely produced by Ubica srl ​​and its collaborators, with the aim of generating low-cost equipment for marine environmental monitoring, which returns high-resolution results.

The experimentation not only allowed the acquisition of marine environmental data and images, but also the direct integration with the AIoT platform for U-EaaS (Underwater Equipment as a Service) NEPTUNE™, created by MYWAI, both on board the ship and then in the post-acquisition phase in the laboratory.

Specifically, the activity took place at the Secca dell’Isuela, in the Portofino Marine Protected Area, between 30 and 45 m deep, where there is a dense forest of gorgonians, mainly consisting of the species Paramuricea clavata and Eunicella cavolini.

As the marine biologist of the UBICA team, Ilaria Rossodivita, explained, gorgonians: “(…) are a sort of coral, which give a high biodiversity to the environment and are very characteristic of the Mediterranean area”.

During the field activity, the ROV (Remote Operated Vehicle) equipped with a full-frame 6K resolution camera and a multi-parameter probe, with sensors for environmental variables, were tested: temperature, salinity, pH, dissolved oxygen and chlorophyll A (microalgae concentration).

The ROV moved along a defined path before the diving phase and its movement was monitored by the operators on board the vessel.

The surveys were georeferenced using a USBL system for underwater acoustic positioning. The video data and environmental parameters were synchronized via satellite clock together with the vehicle position data during the operations and sent in streaming to the receiving server on the U-EaaS NEPTUNE platform.

As a next step of this second mission, the videos and recorded data will be reprocessed by the software of the lead partner MYWAI, to generate a 5D reconstruction of the seabed.

We start from the 3D environmental format, to then produce a 4D model of the data, on a spatial and temporal basis of the trend of the environmental parameters, and finally an optional 5D integration is added, with the semantic information associated with the reconstruction.

The technical-scientific manager of the project, Fabrizio Cardinali (MYWAI, Spoke 3), commented as follows, at the end of the day: “the next phases of NEPTUNE™ include explorations in Sicily, in Lipari, of archaeological shipwrecks and submersed industrial structures. The project is attracting great interest both at a scientific level and at a market level”.

NEPTUNE™, coordinated by the Ligurian start-up MYWAI, is one of the winners of the cascade call for Industrial Research and Experimental Development projects in the domains of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics of RAISE Spoke 5, and is affiliated with Spoke 3, whose objective is the protection and care of the environment thanks to ecorobotics.