Session plénière

 Philippe Blondel Senior Lecturer, Department of Physics, University of Bath

Paysages acoustiques sous-marins – Impact humains, Économie Bleue et développement durable dans un monde en plein changement

Les océans sont en plein changement, soumis à l’accélération à la fois des activités humaines et des changements climatiques. L’acoustique sous-marine est l’outil-clef qui permet de mesurer ces transformations et de relever le défi d’une utilisation durable des environnements marins. Concentrant les exemples sur les recherches menées à Bath ces dernières années (énergies renouvelables, environnements polaires, impacts des activités offshore), nous montrerons les problématiques associées au traitement rapide et fiable des quantités très importantes de données produites par les sonars actifs et passifs. Celles-ci incluent notamment la traçabilité des traitements automatiques et de l’Intelligence Artificielle (Deep Learning), et leur contribution au développement durable des océans et l’adaptation aux changements climatiques.

Conférenciers et conférencières :

S.18 Acoustique sous-marine: du bruit à la communication

  Christian Renner, Hamburg University of Technology

Below the Surface: A Journey in Underwater Acoustics

When people think about the IoT and CPS---provided they recognize these terms at all---they have smart cities, machines, homes and other things naturally residing above the water surface on their minds. However, more than 70% of our Earth are covered by water and there are many use cases for smart sensing and acting, if you think about it. It was a rather unrelated decision during my PostDoc time, when I literally switched sides---of the water surface, from above to below.

Coming from a world where devices cost some ten Euros and wireless connectivity adds another few, I was faced with a different world where you either had no connectivity or you had to spent (another) fortune. While this may be feasible in certain domains---e.g., 6-to-more-digit price-tag underwater robots---it is absolutely ridiculous for small environmental sensors or
other cheap devices. And of course, this may be a problem depending on how your research is funded.

In this keynote talk, I will talk you through my 10-year journey in underwater acoustic communication.
Diving into this world spawned completely new research questions and challenges, plus it provided opportunity for a combination of applied and fundamental research with high innovation potential, including applications in underwater
environmental and structural monitoring.

I will give an overview of these challenges and the achievements of my group with particular focus on underwater communication, localization, and navigation for autonomous networked systems including micro mobile robots.

I will also shed light on existing links and ongoing research to our related research above the water surface with a particular focus on acoustic backscatter communication.