The INESCTEC.OCEAN proposal will create a Centre of Excellence in Portugal's Ocean Research and Engineering fields, synergistically addressing Marine Structures, Marine Robotics, Ocean Energy and Ocean AI Digitalization domains. It is envisioned as an unprecedented space of science, technology, and entrepreneurship for this region and an institution of global reference in ocean engineering in the medium term, reinforced with SINTEF OCEAN as the strategic advance partner. OCEAN.PLUS will be a lighthouse and a role model in this field, improving Portuguese R&I culture. The CoE will gather science, technology research, innovation and education/training to address the specific market needs, boosting the Blue Economy and fostering innovation and technology transfer to reinforce networking among academia, ocean R&D+I communities and Industries promoting the engagement of stakeholders in the field of sea technology as a global partnership. The anchor of the CoE will boost the attraction of human resources to the development of a sustainable regional ecosystem that allows for a large and diverse range of professional paths, ranging from the first education steps to a stage of maturity in a dynamic but stable professional career with a worldwide scope. INESCTEC.OCEAN will support early career and experienced talents through professional development and training on intersectoral mobility in the quadruple helix of the Sea ecosystem (academia & research, business, civil society and policymakers). Therefore, the creation of the CoE understood as a flagship for Portugal, is considered the logical next step in a consistent path of coordination in developing heterogeneous and complementary long-term national and international cooperative actions in OR&E.

The objective of BUGWRIGHT2 will be to bridge the gap between the current and desired capabilities of ship inspection and service robots by developing and demonstrating an adaptable autonomous robotic solution for servicing ship outer hulls. By combining the survey capabilities of autonomous Micro Air Vehicles (MAV) and small Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV), with teams of magnetic-wheeled crawlers operating directly on the surface of the structure, the project inspection and cleaning system will be able to seamlessly merge the acquisition of a global overview of the structure with performing a detailed multi-robot visual and acoustic inspection of the structure, detecting corrosion patches or cleaning the surface as necessary – all of this with minimal user intervention. The detailed information provided will be integrated into a real-time visualization and decision-support user-interface taking advantage of virtual reality technologies. Although ships are the targetted application, BUGWRIGHT2 technology may be easily adapted to different structures assembled out of metal plates, and in particular to storage tanks, our secondary application domain. The project consists of a large consortium bringing together not only the technological knowledge from academia but the complete value chain of the inspection robotic market: two SMEs, one class society to evaluate the use of these technologies in the certification processes, a marine service provider and two harbors to provide access to ships, one shipyard to deploy the system within a maintenance framework and two shipowners. In addition, specialists in maritime laws and workplace psychologists will ensure that the digitalization of this market sector is designed around user acceptance. Finally, a specialist in innovation will lead the dissemination and exploitation activities.

ReNEW represents a multidisciplinary group composed of 24 participants from 11 countries of the European Union capable of playing a key role in supporting the transition of IWT to smart, green, sustainable and climate-resilient sector. To achieve this, the project will build on previous results, will capitalise on cooperation opportunities with ongoing projects and initiatives and will deliver: 1. An interdisciplinary IWT Resilience and Sustainability decision-support framework incorporating innovative models for IWT infrastructure networking interdependencies linking to probabilistic risk and safety analyses and resilience quantification (Resilience Index), supporting the identification of short- and long-term measures that enhance resilience utilising SOA building blocks from Reference Projects 2. Targeted innovative infrastructure resilience and sustainability solutions building on autonomy developments and maturing green energy options; 3. A Green Resilient IWT Dataspace and generic Digital Twin providing primarily data sharing between infrastructure monitoring, RIS and traffic management and emergency systems and climate solutions; 4. Four Living Labs designed to provide exemplars from a) LLs focusing on integrated IW and hinterland infrastructure [Gent-urban, Douro- corridor, Netherlands – EU network perspectives] and a LL addressing specifically inland waterway resilience; 5. ReNEW Outreach and Upscale activities designed to maximise impact pathways.