Underwater robotics ready for oil spills (URready4OS) is an EU DG-ECHO co-funded project aimed to join forces to make available to European Civil Protection a fleet of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) with operational capability to intervene against oil spills in European Seas using new cooperative multivehicle robotic technologies. Tracking oil spills underwater before reaching the surface by using new emerging robotic technologies will bridge the gap between existing traditional technologies (modelling and satellites) as decision support system for Civil Protection decision makers. Underwater oil plumes can come from bottom leaks and from surface patches forming subsurface plumes as recently been brought into the public eye during the 2010 Deepwater Horizon incident. The distributed intelligence of these devices across the spill combined with hydrodynamic modelling will be able to build up a highly accurate and dynamic image of the spill. This cooperating multivehicle robotic technology will allow a cheap, flexible, expandable, precise and rapid decision support system, improving the capacity of responding to these events. Institutions from Spain, Portugal, Croatia and Cyprus are participating in this project. Fluorometer sensor for crude and refined oil have been integrated into two types of AUVs (IVER2 and LAUV) being used in this project. Different approaches for integration have been adopted. The architecture and configuration of the whole system, together with results from the preliminary experiment held in Split (Croatia) from September 22nd to October 2nd, 2014 are shown. The objective of this experiment was to test communication between agents (vehicles) and improve protocols and software developed for multivehicle collaborative navigation. A demonstrative experiment will be held in Cartagena (Spain) in June 2015. The team Partners for this project are the Underwater Vehicles Laboratory (LVS) of the Technical University of Cartagena (UPCT) (Spain), the Underwater Systems and Technology Laboratory (LSTS) of the University of Porto (Portugal), the Laboratory for Underwater Systems and Technologies (LABUST) of the University of Zagreb (Croatia), the Oceanography Center of the University of Cyprus and the Spanish Maritime Safety Agency (SASEMAR). Vehicles system Network Four Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs), two Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (AUVs) and an Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) are the agents networked vehicles system to detect and track oil-in-water spills. Figure 1. URready4OS vehicles involved in the project. Three of the AUVs are Light Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (LAUV) that is a vehicle designed and manufactured by OceanScan and the LSTS, at the University of Porto, targeted at innovative standalone or networked operations for cost-effective oceanographic, hydrographic and security and surveillance surveys. With their latest innovation it can hold almost any king of sensors like the Turner Design® C7 fluorometer used here to sense oil-in-water. The forth vehicle used is an IVER2 AUV, a small man-portable AUV manufactured by Ocean Server Technology, Inc. With a proven track record over thousands of missions, it is ideal for imaging and environmental surveys, including research, development, and OEM based applications. The IVER2 design allows to integrate new sensors and capabilities. It was modified with a new nose to integrate the oil-in-water probes used to detect crude or refines fuels. The X8 is a low-cost COTS (Components Off-The-Shelf) Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, modified at the LSTS, which allows for quickly deployable surveilance missions. It’s a hand launchable vehicle perfected for low altitude reconnaissance scenarios with live video feed. The surface component of the system is a Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV), an autonomous overactuated surface platform (PlaDyPos) with 4 thrusters forming the ”X” configuration. This configuration enables motion in the horizontal plane under any orientation. The platform has been developed at the University of Zagreb Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, Laboratory for Underwater Systems and Technologies for tracking of underwater objects communication router between the surface and the underwater navigation aid. A new nose has been design by the Technical University of Cartagena to integrate the Turner Designs Cyclops Integrator® in the IVER2 AUV. This design implied to add a second CPU to the AUV to be in charge of recording the Oil and Rhodamine data provided by the probe and merge them with the navigation data from the vehicle. To integrate the Turner Designs® Cyclops 7 probes, OceanScan has designed a new nose section for the LAUV that can accommodate sensors from different manufacturers. Besides the probes for Refined Oil, Crude Oil and Rhodamine, it is also possible integrate most of the sensors in the market. The electronics board that interfaces with the sensors is based in AML’s Metrec-X, that includes multiple analog input slots, to which the Cyclops C7 probes are connected. From the hardware point of view: wet connector is installed between flooded nose (wet side) and DVL compartment (dry area). The probes can be installed and connected directly on the connector or can be connected using extension cable, so the probe itself can be positioned anywhere on the vehicle. On the dry side, probe is powered by 12VDC from the AUV power distribution board and probe signal output (analog output) and range inputs are connected to the backseat PC. From the software point of view, backseat samples the probe measurement and automatically adjust the probe range. At the same time collects the position data from the front seat and internally log all this data together. In case of near real time data transfer, backseat communicate via Tritech ® Micron modem with the surface transducer and handles the transfer. Hydrodynamic Model To track and forecast the oil spills and design the vehicles’ missions the MEDSLIK numerical model is used. MEDSLIK is an oil spill and trajectory 3D model that predicts the transport, fate and weathering of oil spills and the movement of floating objects. The MEDSLIK incorporates the evaporation, emulsification, viscosity changes, dispersion in water column and adhesion to coast. The transport of the surface slick is governed by currents, waves (Stoke’s drift) and wind while its diffusion is modelled by a random walk (Monte Carlo) model. Oil may be dispersed into the water column by wave action but dispersed oil is moved by currents only. The oil is considered to consist of a light evaporative component and a heavy non evaporative component. Emulsification is also simulated, and the viscosity changes of the oil are computed according to the amounts of emulsification and evaporation of the oil. The pollutant is divided into a large number of Lagrangian parcels of equal size. At each time step, each parcel is given a convective and a diffusive displacement. Oil viscosity changes and beaching on the coast and absorption depending on the coastal type. MEDSLIK covers by default the Mediterranean sea, the Levantine basin, the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea, but it can be used for any user-selected region in the world if the appropriate map, bathymetry and forecast files are provided. MEDSLIK consists of four modules: 1) a setup module for model domain and parameters; 2) a visual interface for input of the spill data; 3) a run module that performs the simulation and 4) a visual interface for viewing the output. Additional oil spill model capabilities are beaching, hindcast, automatic connection to EMSA CSN SAR detections, use of ESA images. Other features of MEDSLIK are: 1) It includes a built-in database (from REMPEC) of 230 oil types that are the most common in the Mediterranean Sea; 2) It allows to switch from coarse to high resolution ocean forecasting data, when the oil slick passes from a coarse to a higher resolution domain; 3) It allows assimilation of observations, in-situ or aerial to correct the oil spill predictions; 4) The effect of deployment of oil booms and/or oil skimmers-recovery can be examined. 5) Continuous or instantaneous oil spills from moving or drifting ships whose slicks merge can be modeled together; 6) Hindcast simulations for tracking the source of pollution; 7) Integration with the AIS in the Levantine Basin; 8) It includes a simple GIS to allow information on coastal and open sea resources and 9) Simulation of sub-surface oil spills. The model has been used successfully at the Costa Concordia incident and the one in July 2013 in the Famagusta Bay, Cyprus, following an incident from a tanker. Moreover, MEDSLIK has been used from 2007 to April 2012 for operational 24 hours forward and backward predictions coupled with EMSACSN and ESA ASAR images detecting possible oil spill in the Mediterranean Levantine Basin. MEDSLIK is used by several agencies throughout the Mediterranean (Cyprus, Italy, Israel, Malta, Spain), and is in the core of the Mediterranean Decision Support System for Marine Safety (www.medess4ms.eu), a service for operational oil spill predictions in the Mediterranean. Decision Support System Neptus has been developed and thouroughly tested by LSTS for commanding and controlling fleets of unmanned vehicles. Neptus supports AUVs, UAVs, ROVs, ASVs and different types of non-actuated sensors. Operators not only can use Neptus to observe real-time data of networked vehicles but also to revise data from previous missions, plan and simulate future missions to be executed by one or several vehicles. Neptus provides a comprehensive distributed environment where operators and vehicles can join in and leave the network as time floes. Operators are able to interact with a dynamic set of available assets as well as each other in real-time by commanding plans and receiving data from the network. Neptus is the C2 (Command an