Programme time: 14-Oct | 16:15 | 75 min
Room: D. Luis Room 

Moderator: Nuno Cruz (INESC TEC)

Speakers

• Aksel Transeth, SINTEF
• Alfredo Martins, INESC TEC
• Bruno Ferreira, INESC TEC
• Philipe Santos, University Limerick

Full description and objectives

Critical underwater infrastructures are increasingly important for energy, communications, security, environmental monitoring and access to marine resources. Their inspection and maintenance are particularly challeging in deep water, confined environments, flooded mines, submarine cable corridors, offshore energy sites and sensitive seabed areas. Robotics, AI and data-driven workflows can reduce operational risk, increase coverage and provide more repeatable, georeferenced information for decision-making. 

This workshop will discuss how AUVs, ROVs, ASVs, drones and distributed sensing systems can support inspection and maintenance in these challenging environments. The session will use recent project experience as concrete examples: UNEXMIN for flooded mines and cave-like environments; TRIDENT for deep-sea operations and environmental impact monitoring; EU-SCORES and PRR INSPECT_OS for offshore energy infrastructures; and K2D and ATLAS for submarine cables, distributed acoustic sensing and AI-enabled seabed infrastructure monitoring. 

The objectives are to present robotic inspection technologies, discuss operational and data-fusion challenges, identify deployment and validation gaps, and promote collaboration between research organisations, industry, infrastructure operators and policy stakeholders. 

Why you want to join?

The session is aligned with the ADRForum theme of Inspection and Maintenance, with a specific focus n critical underwater infrastructures and extreme operating environments. It addresses how robotics, AI, distributed sensing and data fusion can support inspection, monitoring and maintenance in scenarios where human access is difficult, hazardous or impossible, including deep water, flooded mines, underwater caves, submarine cables, seabed infrastructures and offshore energy assets. 

The session connects AI, Data, and Robotics by discussing how autonomous platforms and sensing networks can collect complementary information, how AI can process and distill large volumes of underwater data, and how these data products can support operational decision-making, maintenance planning, and infrastructure awareness. 

• Contact person: Nuno Cruz (INESC TEC)

Running agenda