From the 5th to the 16 of May 2025 the Spanish Navy hosted the multinational exercise SPANISH MINEX-25 that took place in the Balearic Islands waters. SPANISH MINEX is an annual exercise that takes place in Palma (Spain) with the aim of testing systems in a collaborative environment for Mine Countermeasures (MCM). Organized by the […]
Tag: AUV
Multimodal Mapping for Exploration and Inspection with the SPARUS II AUV
Micro and small-sized AUVs can integrate a wide range of sensors and navigation systems, making them ideal for applications in littoral waters due to their ease of deployment and operation. However, effectively exploring, locating, and mapping survey targets often requires combining multiple sensing techniques. Additionally, close-range, high-resolution inspection—traditionally performed by a secondary vehicle like an […]
SPARUS II AUV Turbot: 10 years in operation at sea
In this article we want to summarize the last 10 years of history at the Systems, Robotics and Vision research lab (SRV) at the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB), always linked to their SPARUS II AUV platform named Turbot. We’ve interviewed former members of the team as well as the current generation of researchers […]
#PLOMEproject: testing innovative technologies for the management of marine ecosystems
The PLOME project has tested new technologies that will allow the deployment of stations and vehicles to monitor the marine environment and provide real-time data. The experiments have been conducted along the Catalan coast at depths of up to 350 meters. The project is led by the University of Girona, with participation from the UPC, […]
Use case: SPARUS II AUV for critical underwater infrastructure inspection
99% of the communications occurring in the world today happen through underwater fiber optic networks. There are more than 420 submarine lines in the world, totalling 1.3 million kilometers which allow us to communicate and operate in the way we do as a society. These infrastructures are equally important today as oil and gas pipelines, […]
SPARUS II AUV Alice: a life full of changes
Back in 2016, when IQUA robotics was created, University of Haifa SubSEA Engineering lab and the VISEAON Marine Imaging lab decided to acquire a Sparus II AUV. By then, the research interest and goal of the team was to work on the development of underwater marine technologies. Part of the team, led by Morel Groper, […]
Testing our newly developed optoacoustic payload in Atlantis testbed (Portugal)
The world’s first offshore wind farm was installed at Vindeby, off the southern coast of Denmark, in 1991. At the time, few believed that this could be more than a demonstration project. Thirty years later, offshore wind power is a large-scale, mature technology that provides power to millions of people around the world. New facilities […]
PLOME, a research project to monitor marine ecosystems
Understanding the marine ecosystem is key to monitoring, evaluating, and managing its functioning. To do this, the scientific community needs data. The PLOME project will obtain it with an underwater platform that will monitor the ecosystems of the seabed for extended periods. Girona, 7th of July 2022. A scientific team led by the University of Girona (UdG) will […]
1 mission = 11 dives, GEOMAR’s GIRONA500 AUVs explore Southern Italy volcanoes
One of the current users of our vehicles is GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, a world-wide leading institute of marine research based in Kiel (Germany). GEOMAR incorporated two Girona 500 vehicles to its high-performance infrastructure in underwater robotics, to be used in different research fields related to marine sciences. Recently, the team did […]
IQUA vehicles being used by reference research centres in Europe
Girona 500 and Sparus II are autonomous hovering vehicles that can be adapted by the end-user to a wide range of applications. This feature, together with their low weight, low requirements for its operation at sea and the added value of using ROS, convert them in a very interesting base platform for research centres that […]