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REPORT ON THE PhD ACTIVITY
PhD Program: Ingegneria dell’Informazione (ING-INF/04 – AUTOMATICA)
Surname: Manzari
Name: Vincenzo
Date of Birth: 07-12-1987
Place of Birth: Bari
Supervisor: Prof. Andrea Caiti
LIST OF ACCREDITED COURSES ATTENDED
1st year (academic year: 2015/2016)
Course Duration
(hours)
Place Lecturer Mark/Grade Language
MATLAB for data analysis and image processing 8 Polo Tecnologico di Navacchio (PI) Dr. G. Ridinò (Mathworks) Passed Italian/English
Game Theory and
Optimization in communications and Networking 16 Università di Pisa – DII Prof. M. Luise, L. Sanguinetti (UniPi) Passed English
Reliability, Availability and Performance of Data Centers and Clouds 20 Università di Pisa - DII Prof. K. Trivedi (Duke University) Passed English
Academic English 36 Università di Pisa
- DII
Dr. J. Spataro (CLI) Excellent English
2nd year (academic year: 2016/2017) Course Duration (hours)
Place Lecturer Mark/Grade Language
Big Data Analytics with Matlab
8 Polo Tecnologico
di Navacchio (PI)
Mathworks engineers Passed English
Rapid Prototyping for engineers 12 Università di Pisa – DII Dr. Carmelo DE MARIA (Centro Piaggio) Passed English
Autonomous systems for underwater exploration and measurements
29 Università di Pisa –
DII & Accademia Navale di Livorno
Coordinator: Prof.
Riccardo Costanzi (UniPi) + various lecturer from different universities
Passed Italian
Introduction to modeling & Simulation of complex & multi-disciplinary
dynamical systems
20 ore Università di Pisa – DII
Prof. Luca DANIEL (MIT Boston)
2 3rd year (academic year: 2017/2018)
Course Duration
(hours)
Place Lecturer Mark/Grade Language
Lecture Series on Passive Radar Technology (NATO Sensors & Electronics Technology Panel Office
12 Università di
Pisa – DII
Coordinator: Prof. Fabrizio Berizzi (UniPi) + various lecturer from different universities
Passed English
Introduction to estimation algorithms for automation and robotics 20 Università di Pisa – DII Dr. Daniele Fontanelli -University of Trento Passed English
TITLE OF THE PhD THESIS
Increasing the autonomy of underwater vehicles operations: long-endurance and precise navigation perspectives
RESEARCH ACTIVITIES SUMMARY
AUV (Autonomous Underwater Vehicle) technology began its development in the 1970s.
Since then, improvements in energy efficiency, sensors technology, and computational power have fostered their wide application. As a result, many complex missions that were originally accomplished with towed sensors or manned vehicles are being automated at different levels. AUV designs include torpedo-shapes, gliders, and hovering capable vehicles, and their sizes range from human-portable to hundreds of tons. AUVs are now used for a variety of tasks, including oceanographic surveys, mine countermeasure, anti-submarine warfare, and bathymetric data collection in marine environments from rivers to open oceans. In particular, vehicle endurance is important and crucial because it affects the working duration and mission completion. Research in augmenting AUV persistence has burst in the last ten years, and several techniques address this issue. Among them, environmental energy harvesting is the most promising method. Moreover, AUV accurate localization and navigation are essential to reliably determine its position and to ensure the correct georeferentiation of the senses data for critical applications.
The thesis develops these two perspectives of AUVs operations: long-endurance and precise navigation. First, a unique prototype, called WAVE (Wave-powered Autonomous Vehicle for marine Exploration), for both energy harvesting from the wave motion and low consumption propulsion, is experimentally characterized. Second, an easily deployable Underwater Test Range (UTR) for Verification and Validation (V&V) of AUVs autonomous navigation skills is presented. These developed capabilities are validated through extensive field demonstrations thanks to SEALab joint applied research laboratory on heterogeneous and autonomous marine systems. It was established in 2015 as a result of an agreement between the Naval Experimentation and Support Center (CSSN) of the Italian Navy and the Interuniversity Research Center of Integrated Systems for Marine Environment (ISME), of which the University of Pisa is a co-founder.
The WAVE module, installed on the modular, torpedo-shaped, hybrid glider/AUV Fòlaga, undergoes an extensive experimental campaign in a towing tank equipped with a wave generator. During the three days of experimentation, a considerable quantity of data related to different recreated sea conditions and WAVE module configurations was collected. From the energetic characterization of the proposed system in terms
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of average generated power, the most effective configuration of the WAVE module for the battery charging was identified. Preliminary data processing allowed a first tuning of the designed system dynamical model and the simulative results of the expected performance of WAVE under typical Mediterranean sea conditions not tested in the towing tank are presented in this thesis. More tests with various WAVE module configurations are ongoing to enable deeper analysis and better fitting of the modelling parameters in order to be able to test innovative wing profiles in more complex wave scenarios.
A first experimental assessment of the UTR demonstrates the conceived system based on bearing-only sensors, which is capable of precisely tracking an Autonomous Surface Vehicle (ASV) equipped with Differential GPS as position ground truth. With roots in previous simulative results, estimation of target trajectory is performed via non-linear Kalman Filtering (KF) approaches: both Extended and Unscented KF versions have been implemented and compared. Results show how the proposed methodology performs in a real marine scenario with challenging conditions due to shallow waters and magnetically noisy environment. Future steps will aim to enhance the tracking performance using moving sensor platforms to optimize the UTR topology and implementing a distributed approach with mixed bearing-range measurements.
The results reported in the thesis show how AUV can be useful in not traditional and complex scenarios. In the imminent future, AUVs will be increasingly used in long-term, long-range, deep-water missions, operating without the support of a ship-based acoustic positioning system. This will require both precise navigation systems, independent of external aids, and an effective energy system that properly combines the primary batteries of the vehicle with environmental energy sources.
CONFERENCES, WORKSHOPS, SEMINARS ATTENDED IN ITALY AND ABROAD
• MTS/IEEE Oceans 2016 – Monterey, CA (US) – Presenting Author of one paper and co-author of another paper
• IFAC 2017 World Congress – Toulouse (FR) – Presenting Author of one paper • NAV 2018 – Trieste (IT) – Presenting Author of one paper
• INEC/iSCSS 2018 – Glasgow (UK) – Presenting Author of one paper
• CMRE (NATO Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation) Workshops in La Spezia (IT): o High Resolution Low Frequency Synthetic Aperture Sonar Workshop (19-21 April, 2017) o 4th Workshop on Military Applications of Underwater Glider Technology (WMAUGT) (04-06
October, 2017)
o JANUS International Workshop (21-22 May, 2018)
o 2nd SECURE UW COMMUNICATIONS WORKSHOP (23-24 May, 2018)
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LIST OF PUBLICATIONS
TYPOLOGY
(article,
proceeding,
monograph
y, source
edition…)
COAUTHORS
TITLE
DETAILS (journal title,
publishing company,
conference title, …)
Proceeding Costanzi, R., Fenucci, D., Caiti, A.
Bearing-only AUV tracking performance: the effect of uncertainty in underwater nodes position
MTS/IEEE OCEANS 2016 Monterey, September 2016
Proceeding
Fenucci, D., Caffaz, A., Costanzi, R., et al.
WAVE: a wave energy recovery module for long endurance gliders and AUVs
MTS/IEEE OCEANS 2016 Monterey, September 2016
Proceeding Costanzi, R., Fenucci, D., Caiti, A.
Bearing-only AUV tracking performance: Unscented Kalman Filter Estimation against Uncertainty in Underwater Nodes Position
IFAC (International Federation of Automatic Control) World Congress Toulouse, July 2017
Proceeding Costanzi, R., Fenucci, D., Micheli, M., et al.
At-Sea NATO Operational
Experimentation with Interoperable Underwater Assets Using Different Robotic Middlewares
Technology and Science for the Ships of the Future: Proceedings of NAV 2018: 19th International
Conference on Ship & Maritime Research. (p. 194), IOS Press, June 2018
Proceeding Caiti, A., Costanzi, R., Fenucci, D., et al.
Wave module for hybrid oceanographic autonomous underwater vehicle – prototype experimental validation and characterization
International Ship Control Systems Symposium (iSCSS), Glasgow, Scotland (UK), October 2018
Journal
Costanzi, R., Fenucci, D., Caiti, A.,
Petroccia, R.
Towards an autonomous underwater vehicles test range: at-sea
experimentation of bearing-only tracking algorithms
IFAC Annual Reviews in Control, October 2018, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ar control.2018.10.007 Proceeding Costanzi, R., Gasparri, A., Pacienza, F., et al.
Visual acquisition system for georeferenced monitoring and reconstruction of the sea bottom using audio for data synchronisation
OCEANS 2019 MTS/IEEE Marseille. (accepted for publication) – June, 2019.
Proceeding
Terracciano, D., Costanzi, R., Guerrini, P., et al.
Bearing estimation in very shallow waters with an AUV mounted Acoustic
Vector Sensor
OCEANS 2019 MTS/IEEE Marseille. (accepted for publication) – June, 2019.
