Schedule 2017

If you would like to check our weekly schedule (all days and programme slots at once) you can also do it by checking our
Programme schedule poster here.
Day 1
01 Oct 2017
Day 2
02 Oct 2017
Day 3
03 Oct 2017
Day 4
04 Oct 2017
Day 5
05 Oct 2017
Day 6
06 Oct 2017
Day 7
07 Oct 2017
16:30 - 18:00

REGISTRATION

18:00 - 19:30

WELCOME DRINKS

19:30 - 20:30

DINNER

07:30 - 09:00

Breakfast

Opening session

Opening words by the representers of the organizing Institution University of Zagreb Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing Dean Prof. Mislav Grgić, BTS General Chair Prof. Zoran Vukić and Programme Chair Assoc. Prof. Nikola Mišković.
Mislav Grgić
Zoran Vukić
Nikola Mišković

Human-robot interaction under water

The underwater environment is hazardous for humans due to the fact that they are dependent on technical equipment for life support, divers have limited navigation capabilities and communication with the surface, and the underwater environment...
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Nikola Mišković

Cyber Security for Marine Robotics

Marine robotics, automation and unmanned technology is quietly bursting throughout the seas, expanding to every field of operation. Though marine robotics has been around long before their aerial drones cousins, new and exciting technology is...
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Niv David
10:30-10:45

COFFEE BREAK

SHIPWRECKS DISCOVERED ALONG THE WESTERN COAST OF TURKEY

The Aegean Sea has always played a significant role in the ancient maritime trade in terms of connecting the Mediterranean, the Marmara, and the Black Seas together. A large number of sheltered bays and natural...
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A. Harun Özdaş

DexROV: 2017 trials results and perspectives

DexROV is a EC Horizon 2020 funded project addressing the development of under-sea robotic intervention capabilities, with a focus on (1) far distance teleoperation – involving communication latency to mitigate, and (2) dexterous manipulation capabilities...
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Jeremi Gancet

A Methodology for Accurate and Quick Photogrammetric Recording of Underwater Cultural Heritage

Agisoft PhotoScan and other off-the-shelf photogrammetry software became available for archaeologists in 2010; In 2017, after only 7 years, photogrammetry has become a one of the most frequently used recording methods for UCH (underwater cultural...
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Matko Čvrljak
Kotaro Yamafune
13:00 - 14:30

LUNCH

Company presentation: Blueye Robotics

Blueye underwater drones for the consumer and low end professional market. Website: www.blueyerobotics.com
Christine Spiten
Erik Dyrkoren
Martin Ludvigsen

Tutorial 1 intro: Omnidirectional Vision for Underwater Robots

The use of omnidirectional cameras on land and in air has become very popular for both research and entertainment. For the scientific community, omnidirectional cameras have high potential in tasks such as mapping, augmented reality,...
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Nuno Gracias
Ricard Campos

Tutorial 1 hands-on: Omnidirectional Vision for Underwater Robots

The use of omnidirectional cameras on land and in air has become very popular for both research and entertainment. For the scientific community, omnidirectional cameras have high potential in tasks such as mapping, augmented reality,...
Read More
Nuno Gracias
Ricard Campos

Demo: Company BluEye Robotics

Blueye underwater drones for the consumer and low end professional market. Website: www.blueyerobotics.com Demonstration is divided in three groups which will rotate every hour together with other demonstrations and tutorial hands-on: 15:30 – 16:30 Group...
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Christine Spiten
Erik Dyrkoren
Martin Ludvigsen

Demo: H2020 subCULTron project – first swarm tests

subCULTron aims for achieving long-term autonomy in a learning, self-regulating, self-sustaining underwater society/culture of robots in a high-impact application area: Venice, Italy. Our heterogeneous system consists of 3 different robot types: artificial mussels (aMussels) on...
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Tamara Petrović
Barbara Arbanas
Anja Babić
Ivan Lončar
Milan Marković
Goran Vasiljević
19:30 - 20:30

DINNER

20:30 - 00:00

Norwegian party

07:30 - 09:00

Breakfast

Startup How To

Learn how to pick a commercially viable startup idea, protect it and successfully launch a venture fundable startup. Most startups fail because founders make common and avoidable mistakes at the beginning. Scientific startup founders are...
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Vladimir de Franceschi

The Scaling of Innovation Tools

A large literature exists on the theory, process, practice and impact of innovation. Valuable insights were also presented in the seven lectures at Breaking the Surface 2016. This lecture will distill the previous work with...
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Thomas Curtin
10:30-10:45

COFFEE BREAK

Rich & Famous with Underwater Robotics? Attempt of an objective assessment

The talk will focus on opportunities and challenges for research and innovation in underwater robotics outside the realm of publicly funded projects. It will look at current research needs, promising application areas, existing and developing...
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Tom Runge

Paths to market – getting university innovation into the right hands

The presentation will address key factors to consider when seeking to commercialise new technologies developed in the university setting. It will also discuss possible approaches in reaching the market and engaging partners that can help...
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Vlatka Petrović

Financing of Early Stage Technology Startups

Financing is extremely important for innovation and growth, in particular at the seed and early stages of business development. But innovative early stage SMEs face several barriers for accessing finance because of their inherent riskiness...
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Gerardo Morales-Hierro
13:00 - 14:30

LUNCH

Breaking the corporate

This lecture will discuss entrepreneurship – taking innovative and bold ideas to solve real-world problems when odds are stacked up against you. However, ideas are almost least important – running a successful business is a...
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Marin Bek

HEBI Robotics: Making Robots Simple, Useful, and Safe

HEBI Robotics is a spin-off from Carnegie Mellon University that builds intelligent and connected building blocks for creating robotic solutions for many different types of applications. This presentation will highlight parts of our journey from...
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Florian Enner

Soft Sensing and Simulation

A critical component of object manipulation in the world, both on land and underwater, is the grasp. Uncertainty about an object’s shape, pose and dynamics, as well as uncertainty about your robot’s kinematics and dynamics...
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Alex Alspach

Bridging the gap between academic research and commercially viable technology

Academic spin off company is essential to bridge the gap between project outcome and industry application. However, running a brilliant start up is totally different story than to drive a successful research project. The talk...
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Cesare Fantuzzi

From research to business: some experiences at the University of Calabria

This lecture presents the stories of three spin-off companies born at the University of Calabria and operating in the area of underwater technologies. The focus will be on the opportunities, main issues and practical problem...
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Fabio Bruno
16:30 - 16:45

Coffee break

Uncovering the impact of the institutional environment on transfer activities

In order to explain the researchers’ and especially female researchers´ engagement in entrepreneurial and transfer activities, institutional and organizational contexts of research organizations have to be taken into account. Investigating such settings, studies focusing on...
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Martina Schraudner

Innovation Tuesday: Round table on creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship

Underwater technologies: The road ahead Oceans and seas are the source of the life on Earth. They are critical for regulating climate and the survival of humanity. It is therefore paradoxical that we know more...
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Kemal A. Delić
19:30 - 20:30

DINNER

21:00 - 00:00

H2020 EXCELLABUST PARTY

07:30 - 09:00

Breakfast

Localization and mapping in dynamic underwater environments

Autonomous localization and environment mapping are considered key capabilities to achieve truly autonomous robotic systems. Localization is the process of estimating the robot’s global position and orientation, while mapping consists on building an accurate internal...
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Eduardo Silva

Technology, archaeology and student challenges: Finding a best practice for presenting maritime archaeology

How do we get the museum guest to feel the thrill of discovering an invaluable archaeological artefact? How can we make people feel the magic of the Big Blue? How can we test a hundred...
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Andreas Kallmeyer Bloch
10:30-10:45

COFFEE BREAK

Relevance of UMS for Below the Surface (BTS) Tasks

Academia and industry continue to advance the state of technology in sensors, sensor processing, precision navigation, communications, automatic target recognition (ATR), autonomy, energy, and electronics and to integrate them into in a growing family of...
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Richard J. Nagle

CETACEANS AND SEA TURTLES OF THE ADRIATIC – THE NEXT STEP

Until recently, we considered Adriatic Sea as a „boring place” with low diversity of cetaceans and sea turtles. However, two decades of dedicated research effort gave us quite a different perspective – eight Cetacean species...
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Draško Holcer

The Great Maya Aquifer

The Great Maya Aquifer Research Project is undoubtedly one of the most important initiatives in the Yucatan peninsula, due to its impact on the generation of information for the preservation of the cultural, historical and...
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Guillermo de Anda
13:00 - 14:30

LUNCH

Tutorial 2 intro: Parallel Computing with CUDA made (almost) simple

This tutorial is an introduction to general-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU) using Nvidia’s CUDA platform. GPGPU is used by a wide range of modern software to drastically increase performance by exploiting the parallel...
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Matija Rossi

Tutorial 3 intro: Underwater Camera Calibration with the Pinax model: a new camera model allowing accurate in-air calibration of cameras in flat pane underwater housings

A new calibration process for underwater cameras is presented that is very easy and convenient to use while yielding very accurate results. It is based on the novel pinax model that allows in-air calibration of...
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Andreas Birk
Tomasz Łuczyński

Tutorial 2 hands-on: Parallel Computing with CUDA made (almost) simple

This tutorial is an introduction to general-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU) using Nvidia’s CUDA platform. GPGPU is used by a wide range of modern software to drastically increase performance by exploiting the parallel...
Read More
Matija Rossi

Tutorial 3 hands-on: Underwater Camera Calibration with the Pinax model: a new camera model allowing accurate in-air calibration of cameras in flat pane underwater housings

A new calibration process for underwater cameras is presented that is very easy and convenient to use while yielding very accurate results. It is based on the novel pinax model that allows in-air calibration of...
Read More
Andreas Birk
Tomasz Łuczyński

Demo: DexROV – Dexterous manipulation

The goal of the demo is showing the motion capabilities of the DexROV manipulator. Demonstration is divided in three groups which will rotate every hour together with other tutorial hands-on sessions: 15:30 – 16:30 Group...
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Alessio Turetta
19:30 - 20:30

DINNER

07:30 - 09:00

Breakfast

FOCE – Long Term In Situ Ocean Acidification Instrumentation

The goal of FOCE (Free Ocean CO2 Enrichment) technology is to provide precise control of pH within in situ experimental chambers with minimal effect on other environmental conditions, to support experiments evaluating the consequences of...
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William Kirkwood

Extreme seafloor ecology: use of ROVs and AUVs to evaluate biodiversity and ecosystem function in the world’s most remote ecosystems

The seafloor deeper than 500 m covers most of the earth’s surface and harbors substantial biodiversity, evolutionary novelty and mineral resources. Evaluation of deep-sea biodiversity as well as human impacts from mining, oil drilling and...
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Craig R. Smith
10:30-10:45

COFFEE BREAK

Autonomous Naval Mine Countermeasures: NATO’s perspective

As the focus on using autonomous systems for mine-hunting operations in nations increases, there is a strong requirement from NATO to understand how combinations of heterogeneous systems of vehicles, sensors and on-board capability will impact...
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Samantha Dugelay

Late Quaternary and Holocene Submerged Landscapes of the Eastern Adriatic Sea

The Croatian coastal region is a part of Maritime Dinaric Alps which coincides with the Adriatic Carbonate Platform (AdCP). Some of the coastal karst depressions developed into larger lakes. Due to the permeable nature of...
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Slobodan Miko

Contemporary Underwater Archaeology in Portugal. New challenges, new ideas

Within the research line of Maritime History, the CINAV created HistArC: a Research Program about Maritime History and Archaeology of the Conflicts, that aims the study Maritime study of the XX century, on its Military,...
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Augusto Salgado

Towards persistent AUVs for seabed inspection

Inspection of underwater natural or artificial structures is one application of high interest to be performed by AUVs. Underwater environments provide challenging scenarios, mainly due to technological difficulties related to exploration (i.e., lack of reliable localization and communication, autonomy limitations), but...
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Marc Carreras
13:00 - 14:30

LUNCH

Company presentation: Norbit

NORBIT SUBSEA designs and develops wideband multibeam sonars for hydrographic applications, forward-looking applications, as well as advanced subsea leakage detection. Our solutions are based on the latest in analog and digital signal processing and our...
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Thomas Rygh

Tutorial 4 intro: DexROV: Teleoperation of a simulated ROV and arm

Joystick-based teleoperation of a simulated ROV and control of the DexROV’s arms resorting to real-time, set-based, task-priority inverse kinematics algorithms.
Gianluca Antonelli

Tutorial 4 hands-on: DexROV: Teleoperation of a simulated ROV and arm

Joystick-based teleoperation of a simulated ROV and control of the DexROV’s arms resorting to real-time, set-based, task-priority inverse kinematics algorithms. Tutorial hands-on is divided in three groups which will rotate every hour together with other...
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Gianluca Antonelli

Demo: Company Norbit

NORBIT SUBSEA designs and develops wideband multibeam sonars for hydrographic applications, forward-looking applications, as well as advanced subsea leakage detection. Our solutions are based on the latest in analog and digital signal processing and our...
Read More
Thomas Rygh

Demo: DexROV – Experiencing and mitigating latency in remote ROV operations

The proposed demonstration will include a setup similar to the one used in DexROV to supervise ROV operations from an onshore location, and will stress the concerns that one shall expect when relying on satellite...
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Jeremi Gancet
19:30 - 20:30

DINNER

21:00 - 0:00

BTS KARAOKE PARTY

07:30 - 09:00

Breakfast

Subterranean Groundwater Discharge and Marine Ecosystems

The discharge of subterranean groundwater serves as a geochemical conduit from freshwater aquifers to coastal waters. In arid regions, such as the Dalmatian coast, input via submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) frequently exceeds riverine inputs creating...
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Renee E. Bishop Pierce

Ex Machina – Integrating maritime robots into human endeavours

Development in marine robotics over recent decades has generally focussed on the technical challenges. Many of these core challenges are solved, at a price. We can certainly continue to work on better/cheaper solutions, but this...
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John Potter
10:30-10:45

COFFEE BREAK

Navigation and Control of Unmanned Vehicles: A Fuzzy Logic Perspective

When dealing with navigation/control of (semi-) autonomous robotic vehicles in obstacle filled dynamic environments, Fuzzy Logic offers a reliable and viable alternative to conventional controller design and analytic techniques, as it is capable of handling...
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Kimon P. Valavanis

Breaking the surface of the seafloor: Studying the traces of earthquakes underwater

Earthquakes are ruptures in the Earth’s brittle upper layer, and represent one of the major geological hazards on Earth. Both the ground movement (displacement, shaking). Associated processes that they trigger (e.g., landslides, floodings), can cause...
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Javier Escartin

Company presentation: Evologics GmbH – Scalable Hybrid Acoustic Localization Approach for AUV Formation Control

Evologics is a high-tech enterprise founded in 2000 to develop innovative key technologies for maritime and offshore industries It developed many underwater communication and navigation systems which are currently the most advanced products on the...
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Konstantin Kebkal
Oleksiy Kebkal
13:00 - 14:30

LUNCH

Company presentation: Blueprint Subsea

Blueprint Subsea manufacture a range of sonar, navigation and positioning systems including: Oculus dual frequency multibeam imaging sonars suitable for a wide range of platforms, StarFish sidescan sonars offering fully featured professional capabilities in a...
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Kevin Webster

Tutorial 5 intro: POP ART (POrtable Pelagic Autonomous Robotic Technology) concept & field demonstration

The tutorial will introduce the POP ART (POrtable Pelagic Autonomous Robotic Technology) concept based on a modular Unmanned Marine Vehicle that can be reconfigured at field as ROV, USSV and USV. The first phase of...
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Massimo Caccia
Marco Bibuli
Gabriele Bruzzone
Angelo Odetti

Demo: Company Blueprint Subsea

Blueprint Subsea manufacture a range of sonar, navigation and positioning systems including: Oculus dual frequency multibeam imaging sonars suitable for a wide range of platforms, StarFish sidescan sonars offering fully featured professional capabilities in a...
Read More
Kevin Webster

Tutorial 5 hands-on: POP ART (POrtable Pelagic Autonomous Robotic Technology) concept & field demonstration

The tutorial will introduce the POP ART (POrtable Pelagic Autonomous Robotic Technology) concept based on a modular Unmanned Marine Vehicle that can be reconfigured at field as ROV, USSV and USV. The first phase of...
Read More
Massimo Caccia
Marco Bibuli
Gabriele Bruzzone
Angelo Odetti

Demo: Evologics GmbH

Evologics is a high-tech enterprise founded in 2000 to develop innovative key technologies for maritime and offshore industries It developed many underwater communication and navigation systems which are currently the most advanced products on the...
Read More
Konstantin Kebkal
Oleksiy Kebkal
19:30 - 21:00

GALA DINNER

21:00 - :)

BTS CLOSING HAWAII POOL PARTY

07:30 - 09:00

Breakfast

09:00 - 16:00

FIELD TRIP

19:30 - 20:30

DINNER

Breaking the Surface