SSF SMaRC

Historically, Sweden holds a strong position in the area of underwater technology, with world-class submarines and unmanned systems. The Swedish Maritime Robotcs Centre, SMaRC will ensure that Sweden maintains its global position in the technological forefront and will continue to take lead in the transition from present autonomous to intelligent underwater systems.

This will provide new opportunities for Swedish industry to both expand in existing markets and to establish presence into new markets.

The main objective of SMaRC is to establish a balanced mix of academic and industrial research, embracing a variety of novel fields such as robotics, artificial intelligence, electrochemistry, vehicle design, underwater networks, and oceanography.

SMaRC’s collaboration between academy and industry will be the driving force, which will place SMaRC in the international forefront of underwater robotics.

The work at KTH will focus on four sub-projects. The first, GPS-Free Navigation, addresses the very important question of where is the robot while underwater. To do this one uses a combination of dead-reckoning based on IMU, actuation, compass, and Doppler-Velocity Log (DVL) combined with environmental sensors, primarily sonar but in some situation cameras. The environmental sensors can detect landmarks to aid in navigation. The second, Autonomous Situation Awareness/World Modeling, is focused on using machine learning techniques to extract non explicit information from the sonar and cameras. These can be estimates of the seafloor bathymetry, landmark features, or classification of specific objects. The third, Single vehicle mission and action planning, addresses the problems inherent in control and planning in situations in which there is no possible communication with an operator and in which the environment may be unknown ahead of time. The final, Multi-vehicle action and mission planning, is developing algorithms to optimally utilized multiple AUVs to carry out underwater tasks, such as mine clearance, more quickly and efficiently than a single vehicle can.

Involved people at KTH

• John Folkesson
• ​​​​​​​Petter Ögren ​​​​​​​
• Özer Özkahraman ​​​​​​​
• Nils Bore ​​​​​​​
• Mart Kartasev ​​​​​​​
• Shounak Chakraborty ​​​​​​​
• Li Ling ​​​​​​​
• Zheng Cong ​​​​​​​
• Yiping Xie ​​​​​​​
• Ignacio Torroba Balmori ​​​​​​​
• Christopher Iliffe Sprague ​​​​​​​
• Rui Figueiredo
• Jun

Click here to visit the official SMaRC webpage