PROJECTS
   

Project
Acronym: subCULTron 
Name: Submarine Cultures Perform Long-Term Robotic Exploration Of Unconventional Environmental Niches 
Project status: From: 2015-04-01 To: 2019-03-31 (Completed)
Contract number:  
Action line: FET-PROACT-2-2014 
Type (Programme): HORIZON 2020 
Instrument: FET 
Project cost: 3.987.652,00 EUR
Project funding: 3.987.652,00 EUR
Project coordinator
Organisation Name: University of Graz 
Organisation adress:  
Organisation country: Austria 
Contact person name: Prof. Dr. Thomas Schmickl 
Contact person email:  
Croatian partner
Organisation name: Fakultet elektrotehnike i računarstva 
Organisation address: Unska 3, 10000 Zagreb, Hrvatska 
Contact person name: doc. dr. sc. Nikola Mišković
Contact person tel:
  Contact person fax:  
Contact person e-mail: Email 
Partners
Organisation nameCountry
Scuola Superiore di Sant’Anna; Bio-inspired robotics (SSSA) Italija 
Université Libre de Bruxelles; Ethology & Swarm Intelligence (ULB) Belgija 
Association pour la Recherche et le Développement des Méthodes et Processus Industriels; Bio-inspired robotics (ARMINES) Francuska 
6. Consortium for coordination of research activities concerning the Venice lagoon system; Environmental monitoring (CORILA)  Italija 
Cybertronica Research (SME); Electronics, Environ. monitoring (CYB) Njemačka 
Short description of project
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 agent types: On the sea-ground, artificial mussels are the collective long-term memory of the system, allowing information to stay beyond the runtime of other agents, thus allowing to continue learning from previously learned states. These mussels monitor the natural habitat, including biological agents like algae, bacterial incrustation and fish. On the water surface, artificial lily pads interface with the human society, delivering energy and information influx from ship traffic or satellite data. Between those two layers, artificial fish move/monitor/explore the environment and exchange info with the mussels and lily pads. Artificial mussels are a novel class of underwater agents. We aim to push forward the edge of knowledge with novel sensors (electric sense/electro-communication), novel bio-inspired algorithms (underwater hives) and novel energy harvesting in underwater scenarios. We will improve the world’s record for swarm-size in autonomous collective underwater robotics by almost one order of magnitude. Our application field is a human- and animal-co-inhabited real-world environment of high impact: Venice canals & lagoon. These habitats are highly dynamic and structured, expected to be reflected by a spatial self-structuring of our mussel population. These sub-populations locally perform memetic/ cultural learning algorithms on their specific local data. Thus our cultural evolution algorithms will promote sub-culture development, similar to the human society that does the same above the water level in parallel. Overall, we aim for an artificial society underneath the water-surface to the service of a human society above the water.  
Short description of the task performed by Croatian partner
 


   

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