Our PhD student on underwater robotics and researcher in the PLOME project, Marta Real, did a research stay at Cardiff University this past spring. There, during the three months of her stay, Marta was able to develop a path planning algorithm to optimize the localization of underwater acoustic beacons using the AUV Girona1000. Marta worked with the help of the ex-PhD student from VICOROB Dr. Juan David Hernandez (https://profiles.cardiff.ac.uk/staff/hernandezvegaj), who specializes in path planning applied to different areas of robotics. This new algorithm synchronizes with the signal rate of the beacon, reducing the time needed to localize them while also exploring the area.
The results of this research will be applied to future PLOME campaigns in order to expedite the localization of the landers and optimize the exploration of the area around them. Also, with the initial results of this algorithm, we submitted a paper titled “GOSSIPP: Greedy Observability-based Signal Synchronized Informative Path Planning for Active Localization of Benthic Fauna” to next year’s International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). ICRA is one of the most relevant conferences in the field of robotics.
