URready4OS is a project that aims 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.
 
From September 22nd to September 30th 2014, all partners gathered in the beautiful Croatian city of Split, for the first experimental meeting to test our current capabilities to address oil spill scenarios using rhodamine dye spills. The area was a navy secured pier that had easy access to the water, and all necessary conditions for robotic operations.

LSTS joined the experiment bringing their LAUV Xplore-1 AUV, and two X8 UAVs. The LSTS team was constituted by Pedro Calado (our project manager), José Braga and Paulo Dias for the AUV operations, and Joel Gomes, Maria Costa and Filipe Ferreira for the UAV operations. Special thanks to our UAV guys for their help in the event since they had to fly back-to-back to Corunha, Spain for one more demonstration for a different project.

The event was hosted by University of Zagreb that brought their robots: the underwater vehicle LAUV Lupis-1 (image above), and their surface robot, the PlaDyPos (see below).

Joining us was also Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena with their Ecomapper Iver2 vehicle. University of Cyprus gave us great insights regarding the possible rhodamine dyes trajectories due to the effect of ocean currents and winds.

After several days of trials in the pier, a Croatian Navy vessel was available during September 29th to allow a more real-world scenario testing, allowing all underwater systems to detect a rhodamine spill and report that data in real-time.

To conclude, the experiment was sucessful in that it allowed all teams to get more acquainted and for all systems to share the environment in perfect harmony while being tracked by our console, Neptus.

Hopefully, we'll return to Split soon to enjoy it!