Journal articles on the topic 'Remote Operating Vehicle (ROV) systems'

The design of a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) with a size of 18.41 cm × 29.50 cm × 33.50 cm, and a weight of 15.64 kg, is introduced herein. The main goal is to capture underwater video by remote control communication in real time via Ethernet protocol. The ROV moves under the six brushless motors governed through a smart PID controller (Proportional + Integral + Derivative) and by using pulse-wide modulation with short pulses of 1 μs to improve the stability of the position in relation to the translational, ascent or descent, and rotational movements on three axes to capture images of 800 × 640 pixels on a video graphic array standard. The motion control, 3D position, temperature sensing, and video capture are performed at the same time, exploiting the four cores of the Raspberry Pi 3, using the threading library for parallel computing. In such a way, experimental results show that the video capture stage can process up to 42 frames per second on a Raspberry Pi 3. The remote control of the ROV is executed under a graphical user interface developed in Python, which is suitable for different operating systems, such as GNU/Linux, Windows, Android, and OS X. The proposed ROV can reach up to 100 m underwater, thus solving the issue of divers who can only reach 30 m depth. In addition, the proposed ROV can be useful in underwater applications such as surveillance, operations, maintenance, and measurement.

Many offshore oil and gas platforms around the globe are reaching their end-of-life and will require decommissioning in the next few decades. Knowledge on the ecology of offshore platforms and their ecological role within a regional context in Australia is limited and the subsequent consequences of decommissioning remain poorly understood. Remotely operated vehicle (ROV) video is often collected during standard industry operations and may provide insight into the marine life associating with offshore platforms; however, the utility of this video for scientific purposes remains unclear. We propose a standardised method of analysing this large database of archival ROV footage with specific interest in analysing the vertical distribution of fish species. Baited remote underwater video systems (BRUVS) are a widely used tool for studying marine faunal communities, and we demonstrate the value of BRUVS for understanding the regional ecology around offshore platforms. A combination of BRUVS and ROV data can be used to determine the relative ecological value of offshore platforms within a regional context. The Wandoo oil platform on Australia’s North West Shelf was used as a case study to test these proposed methods by assessing demersal and pelagic fish populations both on and around the Wandoo platform and various natural habitats in the region.

The successful business technical cooperation between the University of Split and the company PLOVPUT LLC yields a very usable, lightweight, maneuverable underwater Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV). The ROV is capable of diving down to 150 m depth. It can carry different remote controlled sensors and tools, and resolve challenging tasks. Primarily ROV’s usage is to inspect underwater electrical installation. It is equipped with HD camera and LED lights. An umbilical cable is used to transfer data and electrical power from the surface to the underwater vehicle. The position control was realized using inexpensive PS2 joystick console. ROV’s development was mostly carried out by the students of the University of Split (UNIST). The mechanical and electrical subsystems were built and tested at UNIST laboratories. In this paper, ROV mechanical and electrical systems are outlined and basic subsystems are presented.

Purpose A novel proportional integral derivative-extended state disturbance observer-based control (PID-ESDOBC) algorithm is proposed to solve the nonlinear hydrodynamics, parameters perturbation and external disturbance in yaw control of remote operated vehicles (ROVs). The effectiveness of PID-ESDOBC is verified through the experiments and the results indicate that the proposed method can effectively track the desired attitude and attenuate the external disturbance. Design/methodology/approach This study fully investigates the hydrodynamic model of ROVs and proposes a control-oriented hydrodynamic state space model of ROVs in yaw direction. Based on this, this study designs the PID-ESDOBC controller, whose stability is also analyzed through Kharitonov theorem and Mikhailov criterion. The conventional proportional-integral-derivative (PID) and active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) are compared with our method in our experiment. Findings In this paper, the authors address the nonlinear hydrodynamics, parameters perturbation and external disturbance problems of ROVs with multi-vector propulsion by using PID-ESDOBC control scheme. The advantage is that the nonlinearities and external disturbance can be estimated accurately and attenuate promptly without requiring the precise model of ROVs. Compared to PID and ADRC, both in overshoot and settling time, the improvement is 2X on average compared to conventional PID and ADRC in the pool experiment. Research limitations/implications The delays occurred in the control process can be solved in the future work. Practical implications The attitude control is a kernel problem for ROVs. A precise kinematic and dynamic model for ROVs and an advanced control system are the key factors to obtain the better maneuverability in attitude control. The PID-ESDOBC method proposed in this paper can effectively attenuate nonlinearities and external disturbance, which leads to a quick response and good tracking performance to baseline controller. Social implications The PID-ESDOBC algorithm proposed in this paper can be ensure the precise and fast maneuverability in attitude control of ROVs or other underwater equipment operating in the complex underwater environment. In this way, the robot can better perform undersea work and tasks. Originality/value The dynamics of the ROV and the nominal control model are investigated. A novel control scheme PID-ESDOBC is proposed to achieve rapidly yaw attitude tracking and effectively reject the external disturbance. The robustness of the controller is also analyzed which provides parameters tuning guidelines. The effectiveness of the proposed controller is experimental verified with a comparison by conventional PID, ADRC.

A new tool for subsea inspection in the offshore oil and gas industry is now going through performance and qualification testing. The Autonomous Inspection Vehicle (AIV) has been designed and built by Subsea7 and SeeByte Ltd to provide the industry with a valuable tool capable of making a positive contribution to life-of-field operations. The station keeping and hovering ability of the AIV is the next step in the evolution of autonomous systems in the marine environment. Survey class autonomous vehicles have already shown their value with improved data quality and efficiencies compared with traditional methods. The first commercial AIV will be capable of many of the inspection tasks presently carried out by remotely operated vehicles (ROV). Regular inspection data of risers, pipelines, and seabed equipment can be gathered using a single AIV operating directly from an offshore facility. A more rapid assessment of a field can be made using multiple systems operating together from a single support vessel. This has not been done before with a commercial vehicle; hence, AIV is leading-edge technology. This extended abstract outlines some of the technical challenges in creating the vehicle and how the use of advanced simulation linked to practical testing is being used to ensure the performance of the system. Also discussed is a parallel with the evolution of subsea infrastructure that has fully enabled the capability of the ROV; how the introduction of autonomous technology should be considered with confidence is also demonstrated.

Abstract One of the key challenges in the development and implementation of ocean observatories is sustained observations over relevant temporal and spatial scales. Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) have demonstrated their potential for synoptic spatial coverage of regions of scientific and strategic interest. The range and duration of these systems are limited, however, to the capabilities of a single charge. A few efforts have been made to develop docking systems for propeller-driven vehicles; however, these systems are not applicable for buoyancy-driven gliders and cannot be universally applied to AUVs. Here the authors introduce an alternative strategy for AUV docking, demonstrate feasibility with a series of field tests using a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) to remotely recover an AUV, and comment on the scalability within the framework of the evolving global ocean observatory initiatives. Implementation of simple strategies such as this has the potential to reduce the chronic problem of undersampling in the ocean and may facilitate addressing some outstanding scientific questions related to the ocean.

Abstract At the beginning of the XXI century unmanned underwater vehicles such as ROV or AUV became common in use around the world. They are useful, practical and helpful in many underwater works. Moreover, in many cases they can be a good replacement for men. But to secure good man-machine cooperation or substitution high reliability is required as well as safety in everyday use - especially in the Navy. Therefore, beyond functionality, these two main factors are the most important in designing and then operating such vehicles. It can be achieved in many different ways, but one of the most sensitive and prone to damage elements is vehicle propulsion system. Commonly in use bare propellers are in danger of being damaged by many different things floating under the surface. To try to avoid such situation and find an alternative solution, there was an idea to design and build the ROV powered by a waterjet drive. This paper focuses on numerical drag prediction for underwater vehicle with two different propulsion systems. The pros and cons for each solution are also presented.

In last years, ROVs, have been employed to explore underwater environments and have played an important role for documentation and surveys in different fields of scientific application. In 2017, the Laboratorio di Fotogrammetria of Iuav University of Venice has decided to buy an OpenRov, a low cost ROV that could be assembled by ourselves to add some external components for our necessities, to document archaeological sites.<br> The paper is related to the photogrammetric survey for the documentation of underwater environments and to the comparison between different solutions applied on a case studio, five marble columns on a sandy bottom at 5 meters deep. On the lateral sides of the ROV, we have applied two GoPro Hero4 Session, which have documented the items both with a series of images and with a video. The geometric accuracy of the obtained 3D model has been evaluated through comparison with a photogrammetric model realized with a professional reflex camera, Nikon D610. Some targets have been topographically surveyed with a trilateration and have been used to connected in the same reference system the different models, allowing the comparisons of the point clouds. Remote Operating Vehicles offer not only safety for their operators, but are also a relatively low cost alternative. The employment of a low-cost vehicle adapted to the necessities of surveys support a request for safer, cheaper and efficient methods for exploring underwater environments.

In underwater environments restricted from human access, many intervention tasks are performed by using robotic systems like underwater manipulators. Commonly, the robotic systems are tele-operated from operating ships; the operation is apt to be inefficient because of restricted underwater information and complex operation methods. In this paper, an assistance technique for tele-manipulation is investigated and evaluated experimentally. The key idea behind the assistance technique is to operate the manipulator by touching several points on the camera images. To implement the idea, the position estimation technique utilizing the touch inputs is investigated. The assistance technique is simple but significantly helpful to increase temporal efficiency of tele-manipulation for underwater tasks. Using URI-T, a cable burying ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle) developed in Korea, the performance of the proposed assistance technique is verified. The underwater cable gripping task, one of the cable maintenance tasks carried out by the cable burying ROV, is employed for the performance evaluation, and the experimental results are analyzed statistically. The results show that the assistance technique can improve the efficiency of the tele-manipulation considerably in comparison with the conventional tele-operation method.

AbstractA recently developed deep-sea telemetry (DST), based on the digital subscriber line technology, has been successfully used to equip various remotely operated underwater devices with online video control, high-speed data transmission, and power supply via standard coaxial cables with a length of up to 8,000 m. The system has been applied to study and sample the extreme saline and high-temperature conditions of the Red Sea brines and to detect gas emissions at abandoned wells in the North Sea. In both applications, it has been integrated into a water sampler rosette, providing live video streaming and internal recording from commercial high-definition and analog cameras as well as simultaneous data transmission from a suite of sensors to record and sample the distribution of dissolved gases (e.g., methane and CO2) and oceanographic parameters. This combination makes an ideal survey and monitoring tool for leak detection even in harsh subsea environments. The DST has also been used to deploy landers at selected spots at the seafloor. In combination with remotely operated vehicle (ROV) deployments, this technique can be used to increase significantly the efficiency of ROV bottom time during deep-water operations. The high quality of the video transmission, ease of operation, and versatile application make this novel system superior to existing conventional analog transmission systems.

There are activities in viticulture and mariculture that require extreme physical endurance from human workers, making them prime candidates for automation and robotization. This paper presents a novel, practical, heterogeneous, autonomous robotic system divided into two main parts, each dealing with respective scenarios in viticulture and mariculture. The robotic components and the subsystems that enable collaboration were developed as part of the ongoing HEKTOR project, and each specific scenario is presented. In viticulture, this includes vineyard surveillance, spraying and suckering with an all-terrain mobile manipulator (ATMM) and a lightweight autonomous aerial robot (LAAR) that can be used in very steep vineyards where other mechanization fails. In mariculture, scenarios include coordinated aerial and subsurface monitoring of fish net pens using the LAAR, an autonomous surface vehicle (ASV), and a remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV). All robotic components communicate and coordinate their actions through the Robot Operating System (ROS). Field tests demonstrate the great capabilities of the HEKTOR system for the fully autonomous execution of very strenuous and hazardous work in viticulture and mariculture, while meeting the necessary conditions for the required quality and quantity of the work performed.

Remotely operating a vehicle through a TV link presents unique challenges to the human factors design engineer. In addition to the geometrical requirements involved in providing acceptable image matching from the camera to the operator's display of the remote environment, consideration must be given to the impact of the dynamic motion cues provided to the operator. While a variety of visual motion cues are presented on the display, in fixed-base control stations the operator receives no corresponding somatosensory input. The result is that a decorrelation will exist between the operator's visual and vestibular information. According to Sensory Conflict Theory, this kind of sensory conflict frequently results in the operator developing signs and symptoms of motion sickness. Presumably, this nauseagenic response could have detrimental effects on driving performance. The present paper describes the approach taken at the Naval Ocean Systems Center (NOSC) to understand the basis for the large differences in driving performance which are revealed when comparisons are made between directly driving a vehicle and when driving the same vehicle by means of a TV link. The results to date are preliminary, and center on the methodological issues associated with identifying, selecting and testing various tasks which are fundamental to vehicle driving, whether that driving is done directly or through a TV link.

The unmanned aerial vehicle represents a significant challenge to its operators since they are literally out of touch with the system they control. Operating from remote sites miles from the vehicle they control, they are isolated by space and time from a direct connection to the machine they operate. While the pilot of a manned aircraft can always receive some type of direct feedback from the machine they operate, even if they lose all their control and display systems, they can still perceive many qualities of that machine's system state merely from their senses. However, in contrast, the unmanned system is based solely on an electronic link connecting the operator to their vehicle. This paper will review the historical trends in remote vehicle operation and discuss state-of-the-art in remote control systems as they apply to single or multiple unmanned aerial vehicles.

The article presents the features of construction and modeling of the system of operational remote monitoring of the technical condition of the truck in operation, and ensuring the interaction of monitoring data of the technical condition of the vehicle, trailer, mode of operation and rest of the driver and physical condition of the driver. The peculiarity of the vehicle monitoring information system equipped with the means of registration, mode of work and rest of the driver and physical condition of the driver is that it considers the features of remote inspection of the mode of work and rest of the driver and physical condition of the driver in the modern information and communication complex. means. The on-board intelligent diagnostic complex allows to measure in the conditions of operation a large number of parameters of the vehicle with the internal combustion engine and to carry out their registration on the remote computer with use of possibilities of the claimed method. As a result of forming a model of information system for monitoring the technical condition of the vehicle, it is possible to simultaneously monitor the parameters of the vehicle, provide remote inspection of driver's work and rest, physical condition of the driver, environmental performance of the vehicle, speeding. The process of formation and analysis of information structures of information-analytical system of operative control of technical condition of vehicle in operating conditions (Systems of Operative Control of a Technical Condition of the Vehicle in Operating Conditions) is considered. The effectiveness of the remote monitoring information system is enhanced by the possibility of prompt adjustment of the level of negative impact of motor vehicles on the environment and road infrastructure.

AbstractWell-deployed cellular networks offer a cheap wireless solution for the control channel deployment of Remote-Control Vehicles (RCV) and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV). However, a cellular data transfer service performance is affected by a different kind of User Equipment (UE) mobility. Operating conditions of UAV imply working at different altitudes, variable velocities with accelerations/decelerations and rapidly changed antennas angular position, which lead the wireless signal to be prone to negative effects. Available field measurement studies are not sufficient to provide excessive information on degradation problem causes for UEs moving along a complex trajectory. This paper presents an evaluation of the service quality of live operational 3G and LTE networks for both ground moving and flying UE. It has been found that antennas angular position variations in 3D (for example, during UAV manoeuvers) increase data transfer latency and jitter. Moreover, this effect in conjunction with higher interference at high altitudes may partially or fully block the data transfer service. This paper has been prepared to draw attention to the problem that makes the cellular data transfer service unusable for highly-manoeuvrable UAVs.

With the growth of the internet of things (IoT), many challenges like information security and privacy, interoperability/standard, and regulatory and legal issues are arising. This work focused on the information security issue, which is one of the primary challenges faced by connected systems that needs to be resolved without impairing system behaviour. Information, which is made available on the Internet by the things, varies from insensitive information (e.g., readings from outdoor temperature sensors) to extremely sensitive information (e.g., video stream from a camera) and needs to be secured over the Internet. Things which utilise cameras as a source of information pertain to a subclass of the IoT called IoVT (internet of video things). This paper presents secured and unsecured video latency measurement results over the Internet for a marine ROV (remotely operated vehicle). A LabVIEW field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs)-based bump-in-the-wire (BITW) secure core is used to provide an AES (advanced encryption standard)-enabled security feature on the video stream of an IoVT node (ROV equipped with a live-feed camera). The designed LabVIEW-based software architecture provides an option to enable/disable the AES encryption for the video transmission. The latency effects of embedding encryption on the stream with real-time constraints are measured and presented. It is found that the encryption mechanism used does not greatly influence the video feedback performance of the observed IoVT node, which is critical for real-time secure video communication for ROV remote control and piloting. The video latency measurement results are taken using 128, 256 and 512 bytes block lengths of AES for both H.264 and MJPEG encoding schemes transmitted over both TCP and UDP transmission protocols. The latency measurement is performed in two scenarios (i.e., with matching equipment and different equipment on either end of the transmission).

Abstract This paper presents the development of two dual-loop control strategies for an underwater Remotely Operated Vehicle, ROV. The first strategy consists of two PID controllers while the second one features a LQG controller in the inner loop, and a PID controller in the outer loop. The transient response of the two strategies is compared when an anti-windup gain is applied and when there is no anti-windup gain, and a way to tune this gain in the case of statespace controllers is proposed. For further comparison, the strategies are simulated for a variable set point, for the three variables to be controlled, x, z, yaw, so that both their tracking and the effect of coupling can be seen. In conclusion, the use of anti-windup gain is recommended for control systems that reach saturation, so that they can react quickly when they are in an operating zone, and the use of a random matrix for the calculation of this gain in state-space controllers is suggested.

This work presents a detailed study, characterization, and measurement of video latency in a real-time video streaming application. The target application consists of an automatic control system in the form of a control station and the mini Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) equipped with a camera, which is controllable over local area network (LAN) and the Internet. Control signal transmission and feedback measurements to the operator usually impose real-time constraints on the network channel. Similarly, the video stream, which is required for the normal system control and maneuvering, imposes further strict requirements on the network in terms of bandwidth and latency. Based on these requirements, controlling the system in real time through a standard Internet connection is a challenging task. The measurement of important network parameters like availability, bandwidth, and latency has become mandatory for remotely controlling the system in real time. It is necessary to establish a methodology for the measurement of video and network latency to improve the real-time controllability and safety of the system as such measurement is not possible using existing solutions due to the following reasons: insufficient accuracy, relying on the Internet resources such as generic Network Time Protocol (NTP) servers, inability to obtain one-way delay measurement, and many solutions only having support for web cameras. Here, an efficient, reliable, and cost-effective methodology for the measurement of latency of a video stream over a LAN and the Internet is proposed. A dedicated stratum-1 NTP server is used and the necessary software needed for acquiring and measuring the latency of a video stream from a generic IP camera as well as integration into the existing ROV control software was developed. Here, by using the software and dedicated clock synchronization equipment (NTP server), it was found that normal video latencies in a LAN were in the range of 488ms – 850ms, while latencies over the Internet were measured to be in the range of 558ms – 1211ms. It is important to note that the values were obtained by using a generic (off-the-shelf) IP camera and they represent the actual latencies which might be experienced during control over long range and across international territory borders.

The problem of redundancy resolution for underwater remote vehicle-manipulator systems (URVM) is addressed in the current work. In URVM applications, it is beneficial to have the underwater remote vehicle (URV) hold station using its thrusters while a human pilot operates the serial manipulator. This provides a stable platform for the manipulator and eases the pilot’s job drastically when current and/or tether disturbances are present. However, when following this objective, the redundancy of the URVM as a whole is wasted; the four actively controlled motions of the URV are not used to improve the efficacy of the manipulator task. In fact, this standard operating procedure frequently puts the manipulator into near singular configurations. This is not desirable from the manipulator controller standpoint since near singular configurations result in undesirably high joint velocities and oscillations. In this work, a new heuristic approach based on the task-priority redundancy resolution scheme is applied to the URVM. The proposed approach provides a means to avoid singular configurations of the manipulator, and provides dexterous manipulation by using the URV’s mobility in an optimal, coordinated manner. This scheme is particularly useful for remote systems where an a priori trajectory generator is not applicable. Numerical case studies are developed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the technique.

Purpose The purpose of this study is structural stability evaluation of umbilical winch. In accordance with the recent trend for developing natural resources, high-technology equipment on exploration ships is becoming more technologically advanced. One such piece of high-technology equipment is the umbilical winch. In this study, the umbilical winch is divided into two parts (drum and winch), where each is respectively designed with three dimensional models using CATIA, and dynamic simulation and structural analysis are performed using ANSYS. Design/methodology/approach In this paper, the winch is divided into two parts for finite element analysis, the drum and whole winch model, and the parts are designed as three-dimensional models except for some small parts, such as bolt holes. Dynamic simulation and structural analysis are then performed using ANSYS. The analysis results ensure the reliability of the design methods and will be used in the domestic localization of remote operated vehicle (ROV) launch and recovery systems (LARS). Findings The strain is identified from the results, but it is very small. Some stress is concentrated at the lower corner of the drum, but the maximum stress value is lower than the allowable stress; therefore, the structure has no impact on the strain and stress. Thus, it is determined that the designed structure is safe. The results ensure the reliability of the design methods and will be used in the domestic localization of ROV LARS. Originality/value Previous studies focus on the static and mechanic problems of the winch by considering winch and drum breakage in the umbilical winch system. However, ships have a nonlinear motion characteristic with six degrees of freedom according to the constant influence of the external environment. In addition, from a design perspective, the dynamic characteristics (e.g. the ship’s motions) are more important than the static characteristics. Thus, the authors focus on winch stability securement with variable loads, such as ships moving, wave disturbance and other such important environment conditions.

Abstract The article presents the assumptions and main functionalities of two operator support systems – the FGS (Feeder Guiding System) and the remote control system of a drilling or bolting rig. Both of these systems greatly facilitate the work of an operator of a self-propelled mining vehicle in the conditions of an underground metal ore mine. The first of the described system allows for real-time control of the current position of the mining boom and facilitates the drilling of blast holes according to a predetermined drilling pattern. The second of the systems – a remote control system – is used especially in conditions of unstable rock mass or in the case of work in particularly difficult operating conditions, where it is advisable to limit the presence of the crew from the face-up to the necessary minimum. The intensity of these vibrations was related to the conditions of the cutting process.

The need for intervention in underwater environments has increased in recent years but there is still a long way to go before AUVs (Autonomous Underwater Vehicleswill be able to cope with really challenging missions. Nowadays, the solution adopted is mainly based on remote operated vehicle (ROV) technology. These ROVs are controlled from support vessels by using unnecessarily complex human–robot interfaces (HRI). Therefore, it is necessary to reduce the complexity of these systems to make them easier to use and to reduce the stress on the operator. In this paper, and as part of the TWIN roBOTs for the cooperative underwater intervention missions (TWINBOT) project, we present an HRI (Human-Robot Interface) module which includes virtual reality (VR) technology. In fact, this contribution is an improvement on a preliminary study in this field also carried out, by our laboratory. Hence, having made a concerted effort to improve usability, the HRI system designed for robot control tasks presented in this paper is substantially easier to use. In summary, reliability and feasibility of this HRI module have been demonstrated thanks to the usability tests, which include a very complete pilot study, and guarantee much more friendly and intuitive properties in the final HRI-developed module presented here.

In order to explore marine natural resources using remote robotic sensor or to enable rapid information exchange between ROV (remotely operated vehicles), AUV (autonomous underwater vehicle), divers, and ships, ultrasonic underwater communication systems are used. However, if the communication system is applied to rich living creature marine environment such as shallow sea, it suffers from generated Impulsive Noise so-called Shrimp Noise, which is randomly generated in time domain and seriously degrades communication performance in underwater acoustic network. With the purpose of supporting high performance underwater communication, a robust digital communication method for Impulsive Noise environments is necessary. In this paper, we propose OFDM ultrasonic communication system with diversity receiver. The main feature of the receiver is a newly proposed Frequency Domain Diversity Combined Impulsive Noise Canceller. The OFDM receiver utilizes 20–28 KHz ultrasonic channel and subcarrier spacing of 46.875 Hz (MODE3) and 93.750 Hz (MODE2) OFDM modulations. In addition, the paper shows Impulsive Noise distribution data measured at a fishing port in Okinawa and at a barge in Shizuoka prefectures and then proposed diversity OFDM transceivers architecture and experimental results are described. By the proposed Impulsive Noise Canceller, frame bit error rate has been decreased by 20–30%.

A California landscaper discovers an unorthodox solution to rolling blackouts, using remote power generation. The AuraGen remote power unit, under the hood of Sepulveda Building Materials’ service truck, could provide enough power to keep the company operating during a rolling blackout. With the onset of the summer months, rolling blackouts are likely to continue, possibly with increasing regularity as California’s energy crunch extends. The result is that many companies will still suffer more from the lack of power supply and the increasing heat. The mainframe computer, an IBM Power P C, is networked and communicates with the other stores using Strata model telephone tie lines from Toshiba Phone Systems. Al Fergades, director of vehicle maintenance for Sepulveda, suggested that the company run cables to his service truck and use the power from the onboard generator. The company has been able to evaluate exactly which office machines need to be operating when a power outage occurs again, because now it has had the chance to think about it.

The development of computer technology has promoted the widespread application of unmanned technology. Remote monitoring of wireless devices is an application of unmanned technology. To improve the remote monitoring of wireless devices, this study establishes a remote monitoring and decision-making framework based on wireless communication systems. With the wireless communication system, signals that characterize the operating status of devices can be obtained in real-time. Based on the collected signals, the remote monitoring system can identify the current health status of wireless devices, thereby providing auxiliary decision-making for device operation. In the case study, the main engine of an unmanned surface vehicle is used as the study object. The results show that most of the relative errors corresponding to the state identification results of the established remote monitoring framework are within 5%. Moreover, the results present that the linear correlation coefficients between the predicted and real results are greater than 0.95. Therefore, the established remote monitoring framework based on the wireless communication system has good reliability in the state identification of wireless devices.

With the rapid development of the automotive industry and the wide application of 5G network technology, there are more and more Telematics Box (T-Box) equipped with intelligent operating systems in vehicles and they are becoming more and more complex. Because it is connected to the on-board CAN bus internally and interconnects with mobile phone /PC through the cloud platform externally, the security of T-Box must be fully guaranteed, to make the automotive more secure. T-Box can realize remote control function, so the T-Box information security problem has been paid more and more attention. In this paper, the T-Box were tested from multiple dimensions by using various methods, and the results were statistically analyzed, and the corresponding protection strategies were proposed for the corresponding security risks.

The issues of ensuring the functioning of an additional energy-receiving channel for the onboard power supply system of a low-orbit spacecraft are considered. To compensate for the shortage of electricity on board the spacecraft, various options for remote power supply from the system of space power stations transmitting energy to the solar battery by laser radiation during periods of its forced inactivity are possible. Long shadow-sunlight periods of time are a distinctive feature of functioning of low-orbit spacecraft. During these periods the solar battery is idle, and, in addition, even in the daylight portion of the spacecraft's orbit, the energy output from the spacecraft may be reduced to almost zero during the operation of some special systems that require special modes of spacecraft orientation. Reception of energy from a CES with energy flux density higher than that of the solar flux may lead to overheating of the solar battery panel of conventional design, a decrease in its efficiency and even to its failure. Therefore, the analysis of thermal modes of reception and conversion of laser radiation energy which affect the energy efficiency of the solar battery is an important aspect of remote power supply. Relationships of a mathematical model for estimating the available power supply from the solar battery operating in the mode of optimizing control of its power are proposed. The results of approbation of the model for maintaining the safe thermal mode of the solar battery panels during remote power supply of the spacecraft are presented.

Abstract. We present the content and scripting of an active tectonic lab session conceived for third-year undergraduate students studying Earth sciences at Observatoire des Sciences de l'Univers in Lyon. This session is based on a research project conducted on the submarine Roseau active fault in the Lesser Antilles. The fault morphology is particularly interesting to map as this structure in the deep ocean is preserved from weathering. Thus, high-resolution models computed from remotely operated vehicle (ROV) videos provide exceptional educational material to link fault morphology and coseismic displacement. This class includes mapping exercises on geographical information systems and virtual fieldwork to provide basic understanding of active tectonics and active fault morphology in particular. The work has been conducted either in a full remote configuration via 3D online models or in virtual reality (VR) in a dedicated room using the Minerve software. During the VR sessions, students were either alone in the VR environment or participated as a group that included the instructor (physically in the classroom or remotely from another location), which is to our knowledge one of the first attempts of this kind in France. We discuss the efficiency of virtual fieldwork using VR based on feedback from teachers and students. We conclude that VR is a promising tool to learn observational skills in Earth sciences, subject to certain improvements that should be possible in the years to come.

This paper presents a robotics vision-based heuristic reasoning system for underwater target tracking and navigation. This system is introduced to improve the level of automation of underwater Remote Operated Vehicles (ROVs) operations. A prototype which combines computer vision with an underwater robotics system is successfully designed and developed to perform target tracking and intelligent navigation. This study focuses on developing image processing algorithms and fuzzy inference system for the analysis of the terrain. The vision system developed is capable of interpreting underwater scene by extracting subjective uncertainties of the object of interest. Subjective uncertainties are further processed as multiple inputs of a fuzzy inference system that is capable of making crisp decisions concerning where to navigate. The important part of the image analysis is morphological filtering. The applications focus on binary images with the extension of gray-level concepts. An open-loop fuzzy control system is developed for classifying the traverse of terrain. The great achievement is the system's capability to recognize and perform target tracking of the object of interest (pipeline) in perspective view based on perceived condition. The effectiveness of this approach is demonstrated by computer and prototype simulations. This work is originated from the desire to develop robotics vision system with the ability to mimic the human expert's judgement and reasoning when maneuvering ROV in the traverse of the underwater terrain.

Nowadays, cities can be perceived as increasingly dangerous places. Usually, CCTV is one of the main technologies used in a modern security system. However, poor light situations or bad weather conditions (rain, fog, etc.) limit the detection capabilities of image-based systems. Microwave radar detection systems can be an answer to this limitation and take advantage of the results obtained by low-cost technologies for the automotive market. Transportation by car may be dangerous, and every year car accidents lead to the fatalities of many individuals. Humans require automated assistance when driving through detecting and correctly classifying approaching vehicles and, more importantly, pedestrians. In this paper, we present the application of machine learning to data collected by a 24 GHz short-range radar for urban classification. The training and testing take place on a Raspberry Pi as an edge computing node operating in a client/server arrangement. The software of choice is Rulex, a high-performance machine learning package controlled through a remote interface. Forecasts with a varying number of classes were performed with one, two, or three classes for vehicles and one for humans. Furthermore, we applied a single forecast for all four classes, as well as cascading forecasts in a tree-like structure while varying algorithms, cascading the block order, setting class weights, and varying the data splitting ratio for each forecast to improve prediction accuracy. In the experiments carried out for the validation of the presented approach, an accuracy of up to 100% for human classification and 96.67% for vehicles, in general, was obtained. Vehicle sub-classes were predicted with 90.63% accuracy for motorcycles and 77.34% accuracy for both cars and trucks.

Longitudinal and lateral forces acting on tyres are known to be closely related to tractive ability, braking characteristics, handling stability and manoeuvrability of ground vehicles. However, it is not feasible in the operating vehicles to measure the tyre forces directly because of the high cost of sensors, the limitations in sensor technology, interference with tyre rotation and the harsh environment. Another approach is the indirect monitoring technique that can estimate the tyre forces based on remote sensor outputs and vehicle dynamics models. In this paper, in order to develop tyre force-monitoring systems, a monitoring model is proposed utilizing not only the yawing motion but also the roll motion. Based on the monitoring model, a monitoring system is designed to estimate the lateral tyre force acting on each tyre. The monitoring system is constructed on the basis of a new scaled Kalman filter with model error compensator (SKFMEC) technique that is developed in this study to improve the robustness performance of Kalman filter methods. The SKFMEC technique adopts both the well-conditioned observer and the model error compensator concepts. Tyre force estimation performance of the monitoring system is evaluated in the MATLAB simulations where true tyre force data are generated from a 14-degree-of-freedom vehicle model with the combined-slip ‘magic formula’ tyre model.

When operating automotive equipment at low or high ambient temperatures, various devices are required to maintain the thermal regime of the units in the permissible range, which significantly affect the internal energy consumption and the service life of the machine. Currently, such a complex thermal preparation is implemented only for the engine by heating or cooling the coolant. For other systems and units, continuous monitoring of their temperature is not provided, and there are no rules or clear requirements for the implementation of such heat preparation. (Research purpose) The research purpose is in expanding the functionality of remote diagnostics by operational monitoring and control of the temperature conditions of individual machine units. (Materials and methods) Authors used research methods based on the application of standard techniques, the object of research was the system of integrated thermal automotive equipment. In addition to heating the engine before starting, other systems and units need to optimize the thermal regime, most of which can be combined into a comprehensive heat treatment system. (Results and discussion) As a result of experimental studies of the integrated heat treatment system mounted on a KAMAZ vehicle, the dynamics of temperature changes in various units during their heat treatment were and presented. Monitoring and controlling the temperature regime of automotive equipment units will reduce internal power losses and increase the service life of units exposed to temperature. (Conclusions) The introduction of a comprehensive heat treatment system, intelligently and functionally linked to a remote monitoring system, will significantly increase the service life of the units most exposed to temperature influences.

When operating automotive equipment at low or high ambient temperatures, various devices are required to maintain the thermal regime of the units in the permissible range, which significantly affect the internal energy consumption and the service life of the machine. Currently, such a complex thermal preparation is implemented only for the engine by heating or cooling the coolant. For other systems and units, continuous monitoring of their temperature is not provided, and there are no rules or clear requirements for the implementation of such heat preparation. (Research purpose) The research purpose is in expanding the functionality of remote diagnostics by operational monitoring and control of the temperature conditions of individual machine units. (Materials and methods) Authors used research methods based on the application of standard techniques, the object of research was the system of integrated thermal automotive equipment. In addition to heating the engine before starting, other systems and units need to optimize the thermal regime, most of which can be combined into a comprehensive heat treatment system. (Results and discussion) As a result of experimental studies of the integrated heat treatment system mounted on a KAMAZ vehicle, the dynamics of temperature changes in various units during their heat treatment were and presented. Monitoring and controlling the temperature regime of automotive equipment units will reduce internal power losses and increase the service life of units exposed to temperature. (Conclusions) The introduction of a comprehensive heat treatment system, intelligently and functionally linked to a remote monitoring system, will significantly increase the service life of the units most exposed to temperature influences.

Land transport and driving safety is one of the highest risks faced by upstream oil and gas operating companies. APPEA has approached the issue by developing a code of practice for land transport activity that board and member companies have endorsed. This extended abstract reviews the risks of transport activities focusing on the key controls recommended to provide a systematic approach, emphasising driver behaviour. Driver behaviour has been identified as a major contributor to incidents. To improve driver behaviour, a number of Australian companies have introduced In-Vehicle Monitoring Systems (IVMS) during the past few years. There are varied opinions about whether they reduce vehicle incidents; since introduction, results from the IVMS (driving behaviours) are quite interesting especially in remote area operations. The statistics show driver behaviour has improved since installing IVMS. IVMS shows drivers comply more consistently with road rules, and an overall decrease in IVMS triggers (alerts) during the same time has been observed. Like all systems, they are only as good as the people who use them. Without reporting and continual feedback and reinforcement on driver behaviour, installing an IVMS would not have as great an impact or influence on driver behaviour if driver feedback and reinforcement were not also aligned with overall driver management. In addition, IVMS should not be used as a way to catch risk takers, but they should be integrated into a business’s health, safety, and environmental management system (HSEMS). This is to first understand driver behaviour and then to be seen as a tool that can help gradually influence driver behaviour.

Abstract As the core of the new monitoring system, the Internet of Things realizes the integration of wireless sensor networks and traditional communication networks, and provides a platform for remote management and monitoring of the underlying equipment. The intelligent transportation system framework built on this basis combines intelligent transportation technology and the organic combination of vehicle management technologies is conducive to the safety, speed and reliability of vehicle transportation, and plays an important role in further reducing transportation costs. Based on this, this article launched the research on the Internet of Things and intelligent transportation systems. This article first summarizes the concepts of the Internet of Things, intelligent transportation and wireless sensor network technology and the current research status at home and abroad. By analyzing and comparing the performance and characteristics of various communication methods, embedded core microprocessors and embedded operating systems, this paper proposes an overall design scheme of the Internet of Things transportation system based on embedded technology. This paper analyzes the path planning problems in the application of the transportation system, combining the shortest path algorithm simulation results and the actual characteristics of the transportation network, and proposes a simulation data fitting method based on two network parameters and Bellman-Ford, Dijkstra, and Floyd algorithms. The route optimization scheme, and the above-mentioned design scheme was implemented in the transportation system, and the scheme verification was carried out. Finally, this article describes in detail the overall debugging process and operating results of the transportation system, thereby fully verifying the feasibility and correctness of the design and implementation methods of the intelligent transportation system based on the Internet of Things. The research results show that when the INF-PROPORTION is small, the Dijkstra algorithm is better than the Bellman-Ford algorithm. When INF-PROPORTION=0.3, the two algorithms T overlap. Since then, the advantages of the Bellman-Ford algorithm gradually appear, but it is approaching in INF-PROPORTION. At 1 o’clock, the Dijkstra algorithm has a sharp decrease, which is again smaller than the Bellman-Ford algorithm. The second loop condition in the main loop of Dijkstra’s algorithm cannot be satisfied, resulting in a decrease in T.

Antenna unit is an importantpart of ADAS L2, L2+ and Automated Driving L3 systems. It needs to function as needed in dGPS, HD Map Correction Services, OEM Radios and Navigation Systems. The presented monopoleantenna model for 5G below 6 [GHz] operating at 3.3 [GHz] is developed. This work demonstrates the modeling, design, and determining of monopoleantenna with intended targeted applications within the automotive system emerging autonomous vehicles space and as well as 5G Wireless Cellular Technology domain. FEKO simulation is undertaken rather than mathematical modeling to create the structure and conduct the analysis of the proposed monopole antenna.In order to support the fifth generation (5G) of wireless communication networks, SOS messages, vehicle tracking, remote vehicle start, Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) L2, L2+/ Autonomous Driving (AD) L3 systems self-driving vehicles powered by 5G with rapidly growing sets of ADAS and AD features and functions within the autonomous space, USA cellular carriers mobile phone communication standard 4G MISO and 5G MIMO, LTE1, LTE2, connected functions, features/services, IoT, DSRC, V2X, and C-V2X applications and 5G enable vehicles destined for the NAFTA (USA, Canada and Mexico) market, a new single monopole antenna that operate at 3.3 [GHz] for future 5G (MIMO) below 6 [GHz] modeling, design and simulation with intended automotive applicability and applications is proposed. The presented novel new 5G below 6 [GHz] monopoleantenna: 1. Is not being investigated on the literatures review and published papers studied. 2. No paper exists on these frequency bands. 3. The desired monopole antenna is a new antenna with fewer components, reduction in size, low profile, competitive cost, better response to received RF signals for frequencies for future 5G below 6 [GHz] with each of the following: a. Range of operating frequencies, 0.6 [GHz] to 5.9256 [GHz]. b. Centerfrequency = 3.2628 [GHz] ~ 3.3 [GHz] for the above band. c. Lambda (λ) = (3.0 x10^8 [m/sec^2])/(3.3x10^9 [Hz])=0.090 [m] = 90 [mm], lambda (λ) /4 = (0.090 [m])/4=0.0225 [m]=22.5 m To be more direct, simulation studies are carried out and are done utilizing FEKO software package from Altair to model the proposed monopole antenna for 5G below 6 [GHz] frequency band. The focus is on the frequency band for 5G sub 6 [GHz] cellular system. The paper will introduce the following key points: 1. Modelled and anayzed single element 5G sub 6 [GHz] monopole antenna. 2. Student version of CAD FEKO program was used to design our desired monopole antenna with a wire feed excitation coupled with step-by-step instructions is undertaken to highlight the model geometry creation of our monopole antenna. POST FEKO program is used to plot and view our simulation results. 3. We report the development of 5G below 6 [GHz] for fifth generation (5G) system that meets automotive and vehicle homologation specification requirement of antenna height < 70 [mm]. So that the proposed monopole antenna can easly be integrated into multi tuned cellular antenna system. 4. The FEKO simulation is conducted in 2D and 3D element model, in terms of Far-Field Vertical Gain as a function of an Elevation Angle plots. 5. Future research work and study for the next steps will be recommended.

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> The project Viable Alternative Mine Operating System (¡VAMOS!) develops a novel underwater mining technique for extracting inland mineral deposits in flooded open-cut mines. From a floating launch and recovery vessel a remotely-operated underwater mining vehicle with a roadheader cutting machine is deployed. The cut material is transported to the surface via a flexible riser hose. Since there is no direct intervisibility between the operator and the mining machine, the data of the sensor systems can only be perceived via a computer interface. Therefore, part of the efforts in the project focus on enhancing the situational awareness of the operator by providing a 3D model of the mine combined with representations of the mining equipment and sensor data. We present a method how a positioning and navigation system, perception system and mapping system can be used to create a replica of the physical system and mine environment in Virtual Reality (VR) in order to assist remote control. This approach is beneficial because it allows visualizing different sensor information and data in a consistent interface, and enables showing the complete context of the mining site even if only part of the mine is currently observed by surveying equipment. We demonstrate how the system is used during tele-operation and show results achieved during the field trials of the complete system in Silvermines, Ireland.</p>

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> Management of disaster scenarios requires applying emergency procedures ensuring maximum safety and protection for field operators. Actual conditions of disaster sites are labelled as “Triple-D: Dull, Dusty, Dangerous” areas. It is well known that in this kind of areas and situations remote surveying systems are at their very best effective, and among these UAVs currently are an effective and performing field tool. Indoor spaces are a particularly complex scenario for this kind of surveys. In this case, technological advances currently offer micro-UAV systems, featuring 360° protective cages, which are able to collect video streams while flying in very tight spaces. Such cases require manual control of the vehicle, with the operator piloting the aircraft without prior knowledge of the status quo of the survey object and therefore without prior planning of flight paths. A possible benefit in terms of knowledge of the survey object could lay in the creation of a 3D model based on images extracted by video streams; to date, widely tested methods and techniques are available for processing UAV-borne video streams to obtain such models. Anyway, the protective cage and the need to use, in these operating conditions, wide-angle lenses presents some issues linked to ever-changing image framing, due to the presence of the cage wires on the field of view. The present work focused on this issue. Using this type of UAVs, video streams have been collected in different environments, both indoors and outdoors, testing several procedures for photogrammetric processing in order to assess the ability to create 3D models. These have been tested for reliability based on data collection conditions, also assessing the level of automation and speed attainable in post-processing. The present paper describes the different tests carried out and the related results.</p>

Abstract: At Present, in Aviation industry there is a strong and rapid growing interest in the development of Urban/Rural Air Mobility (U/RAM) networks, which are aerial transportation systems in, and around major metropolitan areas and rural hilly region where less possibilities of operating big passenger aircraft to cover short distance in challenging geographical location. STOVL capabilities for fixed-wing aircraft is one application of this technology. For rural passenger transport missions in remote area of Nepal, it is risky and difficult during landing in Hilly and Himalayan region due to geographic land structure and slope runway to operate big size passenger or cargo aircraft. Hence, the sole aim of this paper is to present the practical alternative to these problems in the early days of rural air transportation in aviation industries in Nepal. Here, we discuss about the air accidents that occurred in Nepali sky and along with their reason so we decided to try our level best to come up with solution i.e., our proposed design VAAYU YAAN. This paper clarifies the main motive of deploying VAAYU YAAN over conventional aircrafts. It is designed in a such a way that it can solve the problem of fatal accidents in aerial transportation in Hilly and Himalayan region faced as result of topographical difficulties, slope and small runway issues along with air traffic problems and helps in enhancing the public transportation all over the country for regional mobility due to short takeoff and vertical landing capacity. As a result of this feature, due to less risk in mobilization of aerial vehicle in Hilly and Himalayan places, people across the country will be connected and benefited. Keywords: VAAYU YAAN, STOVL, Hilly and Himalayan air mobility, Conceptual Design, Topographical challenges etc.

In large campuses such as UMS and NTU, students need to move at long distances. The transportation of choice has been public transportation. The most common is in the form of buses. Buses need bus stops at strategic locations and only travel at intervals. Although buses are the most eco-friendly among all the transportation systems within a campus, alternative technologies had been studied to improve it further. Self-driving technologies are the most promising. Combined with sharing technologies such as Uber share, self-driving cars offer the most promising solution. Self-driving technologies are already under active development. Campus application should be the first choice for deployment. Campus environment is a private environment so is well controlled. The maps and network infrastructures are well established so will allow reliable self-driving technologies to be used within the campus only. It is therefore surprising that there are few trials involving self-driving transportation systems in a campus environment. There are various possibilities but all these should be overcome in order to have a truly eco-friendly environment within the campus. Electrical shared self-driving cars allow eco-friendly mass transportation of people because electricity is a clean energy. Sharing allows full utilisation of the vehicles unlike other modes of transportation. Mobile apps and GPS allow pickup of passengers at any safe place instead of just at designated places. Because self-driving cars have no drivers, small vehicles may be used economically without the added costs of an extra non-paying passenger and salary of the driver for each vehicle. The lack of any driver also makes it safer for the students especially female students. Although there are still issues of safety among current self-driving technologies as had been shown by the accidents suffered by Tesla cars running on even semi-autonomous modes, safety within the campus should be much better and there is no need for full certification from the transportation authorities. Operating within the campus environment allow operators to operate without the strict licencing requirements of the public transportation environment. Safety can still be ensured by restricting the operation of the self-driving vehicles within clearly marked roads in the campus, enforcing safe speed limits such as the 50 km/hr imposed by Google and restricting operations in clear weather and daytime only. With remote operators and emergency buttons, even the semi-autonomous modes that are within the capabilities of current hardware, self-driving ride-sharing cars should be possible.

The internet of things enables the owner or possessor of devices (ie movable property) to remotely disable them when they are under the unlawful physical control of unauthorised persons. In this article the author reviews more that 2 000 years of legal history to show that those erstwhile authorised holders who ceased to be such holders and still have the devices under their unlawful physical control are not treated by the law as lasting possessors with long lasting status as possessors in durable and peaceful possession who are able to bring the mandament van spolie against the owner or possessor for an order to reactivate the devices. The same applies to the thief caught red-handed by the owner, the latter is not the spoliator but the spoliatus. Freedom to contract is one of the fundamental competencies of legal subjects who have attained majority. Unless a contractor is exercising the alleged freedom in a way that is in conflict with public policy, contracting parties are free to construct the clauses to their agreement at will, and a contracting party cannot plead mala fides after representing to his/her counter-party consensus with the terms of their agreement. Since Roman law times an owner can come to an agreement with a subject renting his property on the terms of the rent agreement. The owner of a car may rent his vehicle to the lessee after agreeing on what the daily rent will be, how many kilometres will be included in the daily tariff and what every additional kilometre will cost. It may also be agreed that the rented vehicle may not be used for cross-border travel because of the risk of hijacking involved and it may be agreed that any breach of the contract will entitle the owner to switch off the engine management system via a built-in remote control system to prevent any further use of the vehicle in contravention of the terms of the contract. Many a secondary or tertiary institution has incorporated into the terms and conditions of the agreement with its students, governing the use of the tablets or computers provided by the institution to the disadvantaged students who are unable to acquire their own devices, the possibility of remotely freezing the device when it is misused or fraudulently being disposed of to a third party under the guise of alleged theft by an unknown person. The disabling of the device should not be classified as spoliation by the institution as the real spoliatus if it was agreed that the student will merely hold the device on behalf of the owner as legal possessor. Although it has been the legal position since Roman law times that the lessee in principle only holds the rented object on behalf of the owner as the legal possessor, nothing prevents a risk-averse owner from including ex abundanti cautela a clause in the agreement stating that he retains possession throughout the rental period and the lessee only acts as his vassal or holder exercising the corpus element of possession on behalf of the owner as legal possessor. The owner will throughout the term of the rent have the animus domini and the lessee merely the animus tenendi. If in such circumstances the lessee in contravention of the stated terms of the agreement does enter the prohibited border-crossing area with the rented vehicle, he should not be heard to complain about spoliation if the owner uses the agreed-to remote-control function to prevent the vehicle from crossing the border. In reality the owner as spoliatus was merely exercising contra spolie to regain control over his vehicle after the erstwhile lessee had spoliated the owner by this clandestine change in the lessee’s animus from the animus tenendi to the animus rem sibi habendi without the consent of the owner and in contravention of the well-known rule nemo sibi ipse causam possessionis mutare potest. The erstwhile lessee should not be sanctioned in his self-righteous conduct as the active spoliator by a successful application to court for the mandament van spolie. Up to the clandestine change of his animus the lessee had never been in peaceful undisturbed legal possession of the vehicle or computer device. A spoliation order against a party other than the spoliator is logically beyond the scope of the purpose of the mandament to prevent a person from taking the law into his own hands, because he was merely the holder on behalf of the owner while the owner was throughout the legal possessor. The only remedies available to the erstwhile lessee should be contractual remedies if he asserts that the owner acted in breach of the contract by remotely switching off the vehicle engine management functions. A spoliation order is not available if it is being used to enforce a merely personal right, such as a contractual right of a lessee to use the rented object in accordance with the lease agreement. The risk of long court delays should also not be shifted onto the prudent owner in such circumstances, resulting in the erstwhile lessee continuing to self-righteously misuse the property of the lessor with the added risk that when the latter does succeed to court in three years’ time the vehicle is long lost and unretrievable after the illegal border crossing and the erstwhile lessee is a hopelessly insolvent peregrinus. The same principles apply when the breach of contract is founded on any other misconduct of the lessee. Notwithstanding a clear term incorporated in the applicable rent agreement allowing the owner of the Scania trucks forming the crux of the case under discussion, in its sole discretion to be entitled to terminate the rental agreement forthwith by a relevant breach of contract, to remotely disable the vehicles and take immediate possession of the abandoned disabled vehicles at the cost of the hirer, the court awarded the erstwhile lessee the mandament van spolie against the owner who disabled and retrieved its vehicles after a clear breach of contract by the erstwhile lessee. It bodes ill for institutions and owners of property made available to their students or lessees who are by agreement merely holding on behalf of the owner as legal possessor if this unconvincing decision should be seen as a new precedent regarding contra spolie. The legal possessor can never simultaneously be defined as the spoliator of his own property that was per agreement to be held by another as his vassal if the latter in reality clandestinely changed his animus tenendi and by doing so acted as the legal spoliator against the owner as spoliatus. The court order against the owner to return the trucks and their keys, with the operating systems activated, to the applicant’s possession who has not been in possession before the spoliation, is unconvincing.

The commercial transportation of crude oil and petroleum products by pipeline is receiving increased attention in South Africa. Transnet Pipeline Transport has recently obtained permission from the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) to construct and operate a new petroleum products pipeline of 60 cm diameter from Durban to Gauteng. At an operating speed of 10 km/h the proposed 60 cm Transnet pipeline would be able to deliver 3,54 million litres of petroleum product per hour. This is equivalent to 89 deliveries per hour using road tank vehicles with an average carrying capacity of 40 000 litres of fuel per vehicle. This pipeline throughput is also equivalent to two trains departing per hour, each consisting of 42 petroleum tank wagons with an average carrying capacity of 42 500 litres of fuel per wagon. Considering that such road trucks and rail wagons return empty to the upstream refineries in Durban, it is clear that there is no tenable long-term alternative to pipeline transport:pipeline transport is substantially cheaper than road and rail transport;pipeline transport is much safer than rail and especially road transport; andpipeline transport frees up alternative road and rail transport capacity.Pipeline transport is a non-containerised bulk mode of transport for the carriage of suitable liquids (for example, petroleum commodities, which include crude oil, refined fuel products and liquid petro-chemicals), gas, slurrified coal and certain water-suspended ores and minerals. InSouth Africa, petroleum products account for the majority of commercial pipeline traffic, followed by crude oil and natural gas. There are three basic types of petroleum pipeline transport systems:Gathering pipeline systemsCrude oil trunk pipeline systemsRefined products pipeline systems Collectively, these systems provide a continuous link between extraction, processing, distribution, and wholesalers’ depots in areas of consumption. The following activities are involved in the flow of goods between place of origin and place of consumption or application:Demand forecasting, Facility site selection, Procurement,Materials handling, Packaging, Warehouse management, Inventory management,Order processing, Logistics communications, Transport, Reverse logistics. Because cost is incurred without adding value each time goods are handled (activity 4) at a terminal or storage facility, a primary logistics objective is to eliminate handling wherever possible. With the carriage of crude oil and petroleum products by pipeline this objective is fully met. Commodity intake, haulage, and discharge are combined in one process, usually a remote-controlled operation. Pipeline transport is a non-containerised bulk mode of transport thereby obviating the need for packaging (activity 5) and returning empty containers. Pipelines provide a direct and long-term link between these origins and destinations. If necessary a continuous service can be provided with no need for a return trip or a reverse pumping process (activity 11).The elimination of handling, packaging and reverse logistics activities contribute substantially to the high measure of economies of scale that pipeline transport enjoys. The article provides adscription of each of the eleven logistics activities in the context of pipeline transport. Effective logistics service is a prerequisite to help ensure that customers receive the required products at the desired quality and quantity, where and when needed. The most pertinent determinants of logistics service performance aresuitability, accessibility, goods security, transit time, reliability and flexibility. The article offers a discussion of the extent to which pipeline transport conforms to each of these measures of effectiveness.

Purpose A novel fault-tolerant control (FTC) method is proposed to assure the stability of the remote-operated vehicle (ROV) by considering the thruster failure-induced model perturbations. The stability of the ROV with failures is guaranteed and optimized with the determined model perturbation set. The effectiveness of the double-boundary interval fault-tolerant control (DBIFTC) is verified through the experiments and proves that the stability is well maintained, which demonstrates a decent performance. Design/methodology/approach This paper studies a control problem for a multi-vector propulsion ROV by using the DBIFTC method in the presence of thruster failure and external disturbances. The ROV kinematics and dynamical models with multi-vector-arranged thruster failure are investigated and formulated for control system design. Findings In this paper, the authors address the FTC problem of ROV with multi-vector thrusters and propose a DBIFTC scheme. The advantage is that as the kinematic system model of ROV is preanalyzed and identified, the DBIFTC becomes more effective. The mathematical stability of the system under the proposed control scheme can be guaranteed. Research limitations/implications The ROV model used in this paper is based on the system identification of experimental data. Although this model has real experimental value and physical significance, the accuracy can be further improved. Practical implications Cable-controlled underwater ROVs are widely used in military missions and scientific research because of their flexibility, sufficient load capacity and real-time information transmission characteristics. The DBIFTC method proposed in this paper can effectively reduce the problem of underwater vehicle under propeller failure or external disturbance and save unnecessary cost. Social implications The DBIFTC method proposed in this paper can ensure the attitude stability of ROV or other underwater equipment operating in the event of propeller failure or external disturbance. In this way, the robot can better perform undersea work and tasks. Originality/value The kinematics and failure mechanisms of the ROV with multi-vector propulsion system are investigated and established. An optimized DBIFTC scheme is investigated to stabilize ROV yaw attitude under the thruster failure condition. The feasibility and effectiveness of the DBIFTC is experimentally validated.

ABSTRACT The paper presents the outline of the Spill Detection and Recognition system – SpiDeR and its application to underwater oil and gas detection, classification and source characterization demonstrated in the remote-sensing survey of Mississippi Canyon area in the Gulf of Mexico founded by BSEE in 2017. The main objective of the operation was to deploy sensor package from a remotely-operated vehicle (ROV) to survey, detect, and map the location(s) of hydrocarbon emissions that are responsible for the surface oil spill and sheen footprint in the Mississippi Canyon Area. The objectives have been accomplished by conducting a multi-day, three-part survey mapping the area of interest, generation of georeferenced charts and 3D visualizations with detected oil active spills, all supported by a ROV intervention outfitted with oil spill detection and recognition system SpiDeR. SpiDeR is a modular sensor suite capable of detecting, recognizing the source and classifying the hydrocarbon underwater leaks. The sensor suit with selectable configuration can be installed on any type of ROV vehicle and interfaces to the ROV with a single cable conducting the power and data. The presented here and used during the mission complete sensor suite consist of two 3D, broad band, electronically scanning multibeam sonar systems NORBIT WBMS STX, one Forward Looking Sonar NORBIT WBMS FLS, fluorescent oil classifier LIF – Laser Induced Fluorescence detection unit and the video camera with lights. The most useful capability of the SpiDeR is the ability to generate 3D imagery (georeferenced bathymetry) even when the ROV is not moving. That combined with time gives 4D observable capabilities of the oil spill. The 4D capabilities have been proven useful during the u-bathymetry part in Phase 2 and forward-looking 3D in Phase 3 of this mission. The system has been deployed from the ROV in the area where it has been known for the last decade that the leak of hydrocarbons is coming from. The real task at hand was to recognize the leak source and that source contain hydrocarbons and accurately document the source location and provide measurable documentation of its character.

ABSTRACT In March 2019, TOTAL planned and executed the first of its kind Large Scale Exercise (LSE) in Nigeria. Before this operator led LSE, capping equipment had not been deployed in Africa. Since this was the first exercise of the sort to be undertaken in Nigeria, there were several objectives defined at the outset of the exercise: test the entire response chain (logistics, preparation, execution and communication);demonstrate to the Nigerian authorities that a comprehensive and efficient response could be executed in a timely manner; anddocument, record lessons learned and then feed them back to the local affiliate and others to improve future response operations For this exercise, TOTAL deployed its Subsea Emergency Response System (SERS) which was commissioned for construction at the beginning of 2012. Two systems were developed for drilling and production hydrocarbon blowout scenarios. The LSE's focus was to deploy the capping system while also taking the opportunity to simulate pumping dispersant. TOTAL has two SERS's that are stored in Pointe Noire, Congo and Luanda, Angola. Due to the readiness of the system in Congo (recently tested and the appropriate connector installed), it was chosen to be used for the LSE. An abandoned appraisal well was chosen for the exercise due to it being free from subsea infrastructure. The detailed work scope for the LSE was as follows: SERS ○ Controls Distribution Unit (CDU) deployment○ Flying Lead Deployment Frame (FLDF) deployment○ Diverter Spool Assembly (DSA) deployment○ Connection of the Hydraulic Flying Leads (HFL's) and Electric Flying Leads (EFL's)○ Landing the DSA and locking the connector by Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV)○ Performing an Acoustic Communication System (ACS) test Subsea Dispersant Injection (SSDI) ○ Deploying the Hose Deployment Frame (HDF)○ Deploying the routing manifold on Coiled Tubing (CT)○ Connecting all hoses with the ROV○ Simulating pumping dispersant over the well All equipment was successfully deployed and tested with all objectives achieved. The highlights of the operations were as follows: ○ 20 days from Congo SERS equipment loadout until the end of operations○ Approximately 27 hours from OneSubsea (OSS) arrival on the vessel until the DSA was locked on the wellhead○ DSA connector lock and unlock between 4 to 5 minutes○ 52.1 bbls of simulated dispersant pumped within a one hour timeframe

Efforts to locate the wreckage of Sir Ernest Shackleton's ship Endurance have been made possible with Sabertooth hybrid underwater search vehicles supplied by Saab. The hybrid vehicles combine the characteristics of a Remote Operating Vehicle (ROV) - always linked to the surface-and an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) - capable of operating without a link.

This article is devoted to reviewing the results of testing an electronic security seal. The electronic security seal is one of the main parts of Intelligent Transportation System Transit, intended to control the integrity and movement of cargo section of a carrier vehicle by means of the satellite navigation system, mobile cellular communication system and satellite communication system. The electronic security seal operates as remote, autonomous, outdoor used device, installed on the hinges of the cargo compartment doors. In this regard, the development of the electronic security seals is followed by tests to verify the desired characteristics and sustainability together with the resistance to external influences factors. Technical and operating characteristics of the electronic security seal were checked. Tests of the electronic security seal on resistance to such climatic factors as temperature and humidity were carried out. Tests of the electronic security seal on resistance to mechanical influences (vibration, mechanical shock) were performed.

Due to the recent advancements in the fields of Micro Electromechanical Sensors (MEMS), communication, and operating systems, wireless remote monitoring methods became easy to build and low cost option compared to the conventional methods such as wired cameras and vehicle patrols. Pipeline Monitoring Systems (PMS) benefit the most of such wireless remote monitoring since each pipeline would span for long distances up to hundreds of kilometers. However, precise monitoring requires moving large amounts of data between sensor nodes and base station for processing which require high bandwidth communication protocol. To overcome this problem, In-Situ processing can be practiced by processing the collected data locally at each node instead of the base station. This Paper presents the design and implementation of In-situ pipeline monitoring system for locating damaging activities based on wireless sensor network. The system built upon a WSN of several nodes. Each node contains high computational 1.2GHz Quad-Core ARM Cortex-A53 (64Bit) processor for In-Situ data processing and equipped in 3-axis accelerometer. The proposed system was tested on pipelines in Al-Mussaib gas turbine power plant. During test knocking events are applied at several distances relative to the nodes locations. Data collected at each node are filtered and processed locally in real time in each two adjacent nodes. The results of the estimation is then sent to the supervisor at base-station for display. The results show the proposed system ability to estimate the location of knocking event.

Introduction Almost all industries in Australia today have adopted digital media in some way. However, uses in large scale activities such as mining may seem to be different from others. This article looks at mining practices with a media studies approach, and concludes that, just as many other industries, mining and media have converged. Many Australian mine sites are adopting new media for communication and control to manage communication, explore for ore bodies, simulate forces, automate drilling, keep records, and make transport and command robotic. Beyond sharing similar digital devices for communication and computation, new media in mining employ characteristic digital media operations, such as numerical operation, automation and managed variability. This article examines the implications of finding that some of the most material practices have become mediated by new media. Mining has become increasingly mediated through new media technologies similar to GPS, visualisation, game remote operation, similar to those adopted in consumer home and mobile digital media. The growing and diversified adoption of digital media championed by companies like Rio Tinto aims not only ‘improve’ mining, but to change it. Through remediating practices of digital mining, new media have become integral powerful tools in prospective, real time and analytical environments. This paper draws on two well-known case studies of mines in the Pilbara and Western NSW. These have been documented in press releases and media reports as representing changes in media and mining. First, the West Angelas mines in the Pilbara is an open cut iron ore mine introducing automation and remote operation. This mine is located in the remote Pilbara, and is notable for being operated remotely from a control centre 2000km away, near Perth Airport, WA. A growing fleet of Komatsu 930E haul trucks, which can drive autonomously, traverses the site. Fitted with radars, lasers and GPS, these enormous vehicles navigate through the open pit mine with no direct human control. Introducing these innovations to mine sites become more viable after iron ore mining became increasingly profitable in the mid-2000s. A boom in steel building in China drove unprecedented demand. This growing income coincided with a change in public rhetoric from companies like Rio Tinto. They pointed towards substantial investments in research, infrastructure, and accelerated introduction of new media technologies into mining practices. Rio Tinto trademarked the term ‘Mine of the future’ (US Federal News Service 1), and publicised their ambitious project for renewal of mining practice, including digital media. More recently, prices have been more volatile. The second case study site is a copper and gold underground mine at Northparkes in Western NSW. Northparkes uses substantial sensing and control, as well as hybrid autonomous and remote operated vehicles. The use of digital media begins with prospecting, and through to logistics of transportation. Engineers place explosives in optimal positions using computer modelling of the underground rock formations. They make heavy use of software to coordinate layer-by-layer use of explosives in this advanced ‘box cut’ mine. After explosives disrupt the rock layer a kilometre underground, another specialised vehicle collects and carries the ore to the surface. The Sandvik loader-hauler-dumper (LHD) can be driven conventionally by a driver, but it can also travel autonomously in and out of the mine without a direct operator. Once it reaches a collection point, where the broken up ore has accumulated, a user of the surface can change the media mode to telepresence. The human operator then takes control using something like a games controller and multiple screens. The remote operator controls the LHD to fill the scoop with ore. The fully-loaded LHD backs up, and returns autonomously using laser senses to follow a trail to the next drop off point. The LHD has become a powerful mediator, reconfiguring technical, material and social practices throughout the mine. The Meanings of Mining and Media Are Converging Until recently, mining and media typically operated ontologically separately. The media, such as newspapers and television, often tell stories about mining, following regular narrative scripts. There are controversies and conflicts, narratives of ecological crises, and the economics of national benefit. There are heroic and tragic stories such as the Beaconsfield mine collapse (Clark). There are new industry policies (Middelbeek), which are politically fraught because of the lobbying power of miners. Almost completely separately, workers in mines were consumers of media, from news to entertainment. These media practices, while important in their own right, tell nothing of the approaching changes in many other sectors of work and everyday life. It is somewhat unusual for a media studies scholar to study mine sites. Mine sites are most commonly studied by Engineering (Bellamy & Pravica), Business and labour and cultural histories (McDonald, Mayes & Pini). Until recently, media scholarship on mining has related to media institutions, such as newspapers, broadcasters and websites, and their audiences. As digital media have proliferated, the phenomena that can be considered as media phenomena has changed. This article, pointing to the growing roles of media technologies, observes the growing importance that media, in these terms, have in the rapidly changing domain of mining. Another meaning for ‘media’ studies, from cybernetics, is that a medium is any technology that translates perception, makes interpretations, and performs expressions. This meaning is more abstract, operating with a broader definition of media — not only those institutionalised as newspapers or radio stations. It is well known that computer-based media have become ubiquitous in culture. This is true in particular within the mining company’s higher ranks. Rio Tinto’s ambitious 2010 ‘Mine of the Future’ (Fisher & Schnittger, 2) program was premised on an awareness that engineers, middle managers and senior staff were already highly computer literate. It is worth remembering that such competency was relatively uncommon until the late 1980s. The meanings of digital media have been shifting for many years, as computers become experienced more as everyday personal artefacts, and less as remote information systems. Their value has always been held with some ambivalence. Zuboff’s (387-414) picture of loss, intimidation and resistance to new information technologies in the 1980s seems to have dissipated by 2011. More than simply being accepted begrudgingly, the PC platform (and variants) has become a ubiquitous platform, a lingua franca for information workers. It became an intimate companion for many professions, and in many homes. It was an inexpensive, versatile and generalised convergent medium for communication and control. And yet, writers such as Gregg observe, the flexibility of networked digital work imposes upon many workers ‘unlimited work’. The office boundaries of the office wall break down, for better or worse. Emails, utility and other work-related behaviours increasingly encroach onto domestic and public space and time. Its very attractiveness to users has tied them to these artefacts. The trail that leads the media studies discipline down the digital mine shaft has been cleared by recent work in media archaeology (Parikka), platform studies (Middelbeek; Montfort & Bogost; Maher) and new media (Manovich). Each of these redefined Media Studies practices addresses the need to diversify the field’s attention and methods. It must look at more specific, less conventional and more complex media formations. Mobile media and games (both computer-based) have turned out to be quite different from traditional media (Hjorth; Goggin). Kirschenbaum’s literary study of hard drives and digital fiction moves from materiality to aesthetics. In my study of digital mining, I present a reconfigured media studies, after the authors, that reveals heterogeneous media configurations, deserving new attention to materiality. This article also draws from the actor network theory approach and terminology (Latour). The uses of media / control / communications in the mining industry are very complex, and remain under constant development. Media such as robotics, computer modelling, remote operation and so on are bound together into complex practices. Each mine site is different — geologically, politically, and economically. Mines are subject to local and remote disasters. Mine tunnels and global prices can collapse, rendering active sites uneconomical overnight. Many technologies are still under development — including Northparkes and West Angelas. Both these sites are notable for their significant use of autonomous vehicles and remote operated vehicles. There is no doubt that the digital technologies modulate all manner of the mining processes: from rocks and mechanical devices to human actors. Each of these actors present different forms of collusion and opposition. Within a mining operation, the budgets for computerised and even robotic systems are relatively modest for their expected return. Deep in a mine, we can still see media convergence at work. Convergence refers to processes whereby previously diverse practices in media have taken on similar devices and techniques. While high-end PCs in mining, running simulators; control data systems; visualisation; telepresence, and so on may be high performance, ruggedised devices, they still share a common platform to the desktop PC. Conceptual resources developed in Media Ecology, New Media Studies, and the Digital Humanities can now inform readings of mining practices, even if their applications differ dramatically in size, reliability and cost. It is not entirely surprising that some observations by new media theorists about entertainment and media applications can also relate to features of mining technologies. Manovich argues that numerical representation is a distinctive feature of new media. Numbers have always already been key to mining engineering. However, computers visualise numerical fields in simulations that extend out of the minds of the calculators, and into visual and even haptic spaces. Specialists in geology, explosives, mechanical apparatuses, and so on, can use plaftorms that are common to everyday media. As the significance of numbers is extended by computers in the field, more and more diverse sources of data provide apparently consistent and seamless images of multiple fields of knowledge. Another feature that Manovich identifies in new media is the capacity for automation of media operations. Automation of many processes in mechanical domains clearly occurred long before industrial technologies were ported into new media. The difference with new media in mine sites is that robotic systems must vary their performance according to feedback from their extra-system environments. For our purposes, the haul trucks in WA are software-controlled devices that already qualify as robots. They sense, interpret and act in the world based on their surroundings. They evaluate multiple factors, including the sensors, GPS signals, operator instructions and so on. They can repeat the path, by sensing the differences, day after day, even if the weather changes, the track wears away or the instructions from base change. Automation compensates for differences within complex and changing environments. Automation of an open-pit mine haulage system… provides more consistent and efficient operation of mining equipment, it removes workers from potential danger, it reduces fuel consumption significantly reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and it can help optimize vehicle repairs and equipment replacement because of more-predictable and better-controlled maintenance. (Parreire and Meech 1-13) Material components in physical mines tend to become modular and variable, as their physical shape lines up with the logic of another of Manovich’s new media themes, variability. Automatic systems also make obsolete human drivers, who previously handled those environmental variations, for better or for worse, through the dangerous, dull and dirty spaces of the mine. Drivers’ capacity to control repeat trips is no longer needed. The Komatsu driverless truck, introduced to the WA iron ore mines from 2008, proved itself to be almost as quick as human drivers at many tasks. But the driverless trucks have deeper advantages: they can run 23 hours each day with no shift breaks; they drive more cautiously and wear the equipment less than human drivers. There is no need to put up workers and their families up in town. The benefit most often mentioned is safety: even the worst accident won’t produce injuries to drivers. The other advantage less mentioned is that autonomous trucks don’t strike. Meanwhile, managers of human labour also need to adopt certain strategies of modulation to support the needs and expectations of their workers. Mobile phones, televisions and radio are popular modes of connecting workers to their loved ones, particularly in the remote and harsh West Angelas site. One solution — regular fly-in-fly out shifts — tends also to be alienating for workers and locals (Cheshire; Storey; Tonts). As with any operations, the cost of maintaining a safe and comfortable environment for workers requires trade-offs. Companies face risks from mobile phones, leaking computer networks, and espionage that expose the site to security risks. Because of such risks, miners tend be subject to disciplinary regimes. It is common to test alcohol and drug levels. There was some resistance from workers, who refused to change to saliva testing from urine testing (Latimer). Contesting these machines places the medium, in a different sense, at the centre of regulation of the workers’ bodies. In Northparkes, the solution of hybrid autonomous and remote operation is also a solution for modulating labour. It is safer and more comfortable, while also being more efficient, as one experienced driver can control three trucks at a time. This more complex mode of mediation is necessary because underground mines are more complex in geology, and working environments to suit full autonomy. These variations provide different relationships between operators and machines. The operator uses a games controller, and watches four video views from the cabin to make the vehicle fill the bucket with ore (Northparkes Mines, 9). Again, media have become a pivotal element in the mining assemblage. This combines the safety and comfort of autonomous operation (helping to retain staff) with the required use of human sensorimotor dexterity. Mine systems deserve attention from media studies because sites are combining large scale physical complexity with increasingly sophisticated computing. The conventional pictures of mining and media rarely address the specificity of subjective and artefactual encounters in and around mine sites. Any research on mining communication is typically within the instrumental frames of engineering (Duff et al.). Some of the developments in mechanical systems have contributed to efficiency and safety of many mines: larger trucks, more rock crushers, and so on. However, the single most powerful influence on mining has been adopting digital media to control, integrate and mining systems. Rio Tinto’s transformative agenda document is outlined in its high profile ‘Mine of the Future’ agenda (US Federal News Service). The media to which I refer are not only those in popular culture, but also those with digital control and communications systems used internally within mines and supply chains. The global mining industry began adopting digital communication automation (somewhat) systematically only in the 1980s. Mining companies hesitated to adopt digital media because the fundamentals of mining are so risky and bound to standard procedures. Large scale material operations, extracting and processing minerals from under the ground: hardly to be an appropriate space for delicate digital electronics. Mining is also exposed to volatile economic conditions, so investing in anything major can be unattractive. High technology perhaps contradicts an industry ethos of risk-taking and masculinity. Digital media became domesticated, and familiar to a new generation of formally educated engineers for whom databases and algorithms (Manovich) were second nature. Digital systems become simultaneously controllers of objects, and mediators of meanings and relationships. They control movements, and express communications. Computers slide from using meanings to invoking direct actions over objects in the world. Even on an everyday scale, computer operations often control physical processes. Anti-lock Braking Systems regulate a vehicle’s braking pressure to avoid the danger when wheels lock-up. Or another example, is the ATM, which involves both symbolic interactions, and also exchange of physical objects. These operations are examples of the ‘asignifying semiotic’ (Guattari), in which meanings and non-meanings interact. There is no operation essential distinction between media- and non-media digital operations. Which are symbolic, attached or non-consequential is not clear. This trend towards using computation for both meanings and actions has accelerated since 2000. Mines of the Future Beyond a relatively standard set of office and communications software, many fields, including mining, have adopted specialised packages for their domains. In 3D design, it is AutoCAD. In hard sciences, it is custom modelling. In audiovisual production, it may be Apple and Adobe products. Some platforms define their subjectivity, professional identity and practices around these platforms. This platform orientation is apparent in areas of mining, so that applications such as the Gemcom, Rockware, Geological Database and Resource Estimation Modelling from Micromine; geology/mine design software from Runge, Minemap; and mine production data management software from Corvus. However, software is only a small proportion of overall costs in the industry. Agents in mining demand solutions to peculiar problems and requirements. They are bound by their enormous scale; physical risks of environments, explosive and moving elements; need to negotiate constant change, as mining literally takes the ground from under itself; the need to incorporate geological patterns; and the importance of logistics. When digital media are the solution, there can be what is perceived as rapid gains, including greater capacities for surveillance and control. Digital media do not provide more force. Instead, they modulate the direction, speed and timing of activities. It is not a complete solution, because too many uncontrolled elements are at play. Instead, there are moment and situations when the degree of control refigures the work that can be done. Conclusions In this article I have proposed a new conception of media change, by reading digital innovations in mining practices themselves as media changes. This involved developing an initial reading of the operations of mining as digital media. With this approach, the array of media components extends far beyond the conventional ‘mass media’ of newspapers and television. It offers a more molecular media environment which is increasingly heterogeneous. It sometimes involves materiality on a huge scale, and is sometimes apparently virtual. The mining media event can be a semiotic, a signal, a material entity and so on. It can be a command to a human. It can be a measurement of location, a rock formation, a pressure or an explosion. The mining media event, as discussed above, is subject to Manovich’s principles of media, being numerical, variable and automated. In the mining media event, these principles move from the aesthetic to the instrumental and physical domains of the mine site. The role of new media operates at many levels — from the bottom of the mine site to the cruising altitude of the fly-in-fly out aeroplanes — has motivated significant changes in the Australian industry. When digital media and robotics come into play, they do not so much introduce change, but reintroduce similarity. This inversion of media is less about meaning, and more about local mastery. Media modulation extends the kinds of influence that can be exerted by the actors in control. In these situations, the degrees of control, and of resistance, are yet to be seen. Acknowledgments Thanks to Mining IQ for a researcher's pass at Mining Automation and Communication Conference, Perth in August 2012. References Bellamy, D., and L. 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Taylor & Francis, 2008. Kirschenbaum, M.G. Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination. Campridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2008. Latimer, Cole. “Fair Work Appeal May Change Drug Testing on Site.” Mining Australia 2012. 3 May 2013 ‹http://www.miningaustralia.com.au/news/fair-work-appeal-may-change-drug-testing-on-site›. Latour, B. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Maher, J. The Future Was Here: The Commodore Amiga. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2012. Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001. McDonald, P., R. Mayes, and B. Pini. “Mining Work, Family and Community: A Spatially-Oriented Approach to the Impact of the Ravensthorpe Nickel Mine Closure in Remote Australia.” Journal of Industrial Relations 2012. Middelbeek, E. “Australia Mining Tax Set to Slam Iron Ore Profits.” Metal Bulletin Weekly 2012. Montfort, N., and I. Bogost. Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System. 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Digital culture, as we know it, owes much to space exploration. The technological pursuit of outer space has fuelled innovations in signal processing and automated computing that have left an impact on the hardware and software that make our digital present possible. Developments in satellite technologies, for example, produced far-reaching improvements in digital image processing (Gonzalez and Woods) and the demands of the Apollo missions advanced applications of the integrated circuit – the predecessor to the microchip (Hall). All the inventive digital beginnings in space found their way back to earth and contributed to the development of contemporary formations of culture composed around practices dependent on and driven by digital technologies. Their terrestrial adoption and adaptation supported a revolution in information, mediation and communication technologies, increasing the scope and speed of global production, exchange and use of data and advancing techniques of imaging, mapping, navigation, surveillance, remote sensing and telemetry to a point that could only be imagined before the arrival of the space age. Steadily knotted with contemporary scientific, commercial and military endeavours and the fabric of the quotidian, digital devices and practices now have a bearing upon all aspects of our pursuits, pleasures and politics. Our increasing reliance upon the digital shaped the shared surfaces of human societies and produced cultures in their own right. While aware of the uneasy baggage of the term ‘culture’, we use it here to designate all digitally grounded objects, systems and processes which are materially and socially inflecting our ways of life. In this sense, we consider both what Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri describe as “those results of social production that are necessary for social interaction and further production, such as knowledges, languages, codes, information, affects, and so forth” (viii), and the material contexts of these products of the social. The effects of digital technologies on the socio-material ambits of human life are many and substantial and – as we want to suggest here – evolving through their ‘extraterrestrial’ beginnings. The contemporary courses of digital cultures not only continue to develop through investments in space exploration, they are themselves largely contingent on the technologies that we have placed in outer space, for instance, global telecommunications infrastructure, GPS, Google maps, weather and climate monitoring facilities and missile grids all rely on the constellation of satellites orbiting the earth. However, we have been increasingly witnessing something new: modes of social production that developed on earth from the technical demands of the space age are now being directed, or rather returned back to have new beginnings beyond the globe. Our focus in this paper is this outward momentum of digital cultures. We do not aim to overview the entire history of the digital in outer space, but instead to frame the extraterrestrial extension of human technologies in terms of the socio-material dimensions of extra-planetary digital cultures. Hannah Arendt described how the space age accelerated the already rapid pace of techno-scientific development, denying us pause during which to grasp its effects upon the “human condition”. Our treacherously fast technological conquest of outer space leaves in its wake an aporia in language and “the trouble”, as Arendt puts it, is that we will “forever be unable to understand, that is, to think and speak about the things which nevertheless we are able to do” (3). This crisis in language has at its core a problem of ontology: a failure to recognise that the words we use to describe ourselves are always, and have always been, bound up in our technological modes of being. As thinkers such as Gilbert Simondon and Bernard Stiegler argued and Arendt derided (but could not deny), our technologies are inseparably bound up with the evolutionary continuum of the human and the migration of our digital ways of life into outer space still further complicates articulation of our techno-logic condition. In Stiegler’s view the technical is the primordial supplement to the human into which we have been “exteriorising” our “interiors” of social memory and shared culture to alter, assert and advance the material-social ambits of our living milieu and which have been consequently changing the idea of what it is to be human (141). Without technologies – what Stiegler terms “organised inorganic matter” (17), which mediate our relationships to the world – there is no human in the inhuman extraterrestrial environment and so, effectively, it is only through the organisation of inert matter that culture or social life can exist outside the earth. Offering the possibility of digitally abstracting and processing the complexities and perils of outer space, space technologies are not only a means of creating a human milieu ‘out there’, but of expediting potentially endless extra-planetary progress. The transposition of digital culture into outer space occasions a series of beginnings (and returns). In this paper, we explore extra-planetary digital culture as a productive trajectory in broader discussions of the ontological status of technologies that are socially and materially imbricated in the idea of the human. We consider the digital facilitation of exchanges between earth and outer space and assign them a place in an evolving discourse concerned with expressing the human in relation to the technological. We suggest that ontological questions occasioned by the socio-material effects of technologies require consideration of the digital in outer space and that the inhuman milieu of the extraterrestrial opens up a unique perspective from which to consider the nascent shape of what might be the emerging extra-planetary beginnings of the post human. Digital Exurbias The unfolding of extra-planetary digital cultures necessitates the simultaneous exteriorisation of our production of the social into outer space and the domestication of our extraterrestrial activities here on earth. Caught in the processes of mediated exploration, the moon, Mars, Pluto and other natural or human-made celestial bodies such as the International Space Station are almost becoming remote outer suburbs – exurbias of earth. Digital cultures are reaching toward and expanding into outer space through the development of technologies, but more specifically through advancing the reciprocal processes of social exchanges between terrestrial and extraterrestrial space. Whether it be through public satellite tracking via applications such as Heavens-Above or The High Definition Earth Viewing system’s continuous video feed from the camera attached to the ISS (NASA, "High Definition") – which streams us back an image of our planetary habitat from an Archimedean point of view – we are being encouraged to embrace a kind of digital enculturation of extraterrestrial space. The production of social life outside our own planet has already had many forms, but perhaps can be seen most clearly aboard the International Space Station, presently the only extraterrestrial environment physically occupied by humans. Amongst its many landmark events, the ISS has become a vigorous node of social media activity. For example, in 2013 Chris Hadfield became a Twitter phenomenon while living aboard the ISS; the astronaut gathered over a million Twitter followers, he made posts on Facebook, Tumblr and Reddit, multiple mini-vids, and his rendition of David Bowie’s Space Oddity on YouTube (Hadfield) has thus far been viewed over 26 million times. His success, as has been noted, was not merely due to his use of social media in the unique environment of outer space, but rather that he was able to make the highly technical lives of those in space familiar by revealing to a global audience “how you make a sandwich in microgravity, how you get a haircut” (Potter). This techno-mediation of the everyday onboard ISS is, from a Stieglerian perspective, a gesture toward the establishment of “the relation of the living to its milieu” (49). As part of this process, the new trends and innovations of social media on earth are, for example, continuously replayed and rehearsed in the outer space, with a litany of ‘digital firsts’ such as the first human-sent extraterrestrial ‘tweet’, first Instagram post, first Reddit AMA and first Pinterest ‘pin’ (Knoblauch), betraying our obsessions with serial digital beginnings. The constitution of an extra-planetary milieu progresses with the ability to conduct real-time interactions between those on and outside the earth. This, in essence, collapses all social aspects of the physical barrier and the ISS becomes merely a high-tech outer suburb of the globe. Yet fluid, uninterrupted, real-time communications with the station have only just become possible. Previously, the Iinternet connections between earth and the ISS were slow and troublesome, akin to the early dial-up, but the recently installed Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science (OPAL), a laser communications system, now enables the incredible speeds needed to effortlessly communicate with the human orbital outpost in real-time. After OPAL was affixed to the ISS, it was first tested using the now-traditional system test, “hello, world” (NASA, "Optical Payload"); referencing the early history of digital culture itself, and in doing so, perhaps making the most apt use of this phrase, ever. Open to Beginnings Digital technologies have become vital in sustaining social life, facilitating the immaterial production of knowledge, information and affects (Hardt and Negri), but we have also become increasingly attentive to their materialities; or rather, the ‘matter of things’ never went away, it was only partially occluded by the explosion of social interactivities sparked by the ‘digital revolution’. Within the ongoing ‘material turn’, there have been a gamut of inquiries into the material contexts of the ‘digital’, for example, in the fields of digital anthropology (Horst and Miller), media studies (Kirschenbaum, Fuller, Parikka) and science and technology studies (Gillespie, Boczkowski, and Foot) – to mention only a very few of these works. Outside the globe material things are again insistent, they contain and maintain the terrestrial life from which they were formed. Outer space quickens our awareness of the materiality underpinning the technical apparatus we use to mediate and communicate and the delicate support that it provides for the complex of digital practices built upon it. Social exchanges between earth and its extra-planetary exurbias are made possible through the very materiality of digital signals within which these immaterial interactions can take place. In the pared down reality of contemporary life in outer space, the sociality of the digital is also harnessed to bring forth forms of material production. For example, when astronauts in space recently needed a particular wrench, NASA was able to email them a digital file from which they were then able print the required tool (Shukman). Through technologies such as the 3D printer, the line between products of the social and the creation of material objects becomes blurred. In extra-planetary space, the ‘thingness’ of technologies is at least as crucial as it is on earth and yet – as it appears – material production in space might eventually rely on the infrastructures occasioned by the immaterial exchanges of digital culture. As technical objects, like the 3D printer, are evolving so too are conceptions of the relationship that humans have with technologies. One result of this is the idea that technologies themselves are becoming capable of producing social life; in this conception, the relationships and interrelationships of and with technologies become a potential field of study. We suggest here that the extra-planetary extension of digital cultures will not only involve, but help shape, the evolution of these relationships, and as such, our conceptions and articulations of a future beyond the globe will require a re-positioning of the human and technical objects within the arena of life. This will require new beginnings. Yet beginnings are duplicitous, as Maurice Blanchot wrote – “one must never rely on the word beginning”; technologies have always been part of the human, our rapport is in some sense what defines the human. To successfully introduce the social in outer space will involve an evolution in both the theory and practice of this participation. And it is perhaps through the extra-planetary projection of digital culture that this will come about. In outer space the human partnership with the objects of technology, far from being a utopian promise or dystopian end, is not only a necessity but also a productive force shaping the collective beginnings of our historical co-evolution. Objects of technology that migrate into space appear designed to smooth the ontological misgivings that might arise from our extra-planetary progress. While they are part of the means for producing the social in outer space and physical fortifications against human frailty, they are perhaps also the beginnings of the extraterrestrial enculturation of technologies, given form. One example of such technologies is the anthropomorphic robots currently developed by the Dextrous Robotics Laboratory for NASA. The latest iteration of these, Robotnaut 2 was the first humanoid robot in space; it is a “highly dexterous” robot that works beside astronauts performing a wide range of manual and sensory activities (NASA, "Robonaut"). The Robonaut 2 has recorded its own series of ‘firsts’, including being the “first robot inside a human space vehicle operating without a cage, and first robot to work with human-rated tools in space” (NASA, "Robonaut"). One of the things which mark it as a potential beginning is this ability to use the same tools as astronauts. This suggests the image of a tool using a tool – at first glance, something now quite common in the operation of machines – however, in this case the robot is able to manipulate a tool that was not designed for it. This then might also include the machine itself in our own origins, in that evolutionary moment of grasping a tool or stealing fire from the gods. As an exteriorisation of the human, these robots also suggest that a shared extra-planetary culture would involve acknowledging the participation of technologic entities, recognising that they share these beginnings with us, and thus are participating in the origins of our potential futures beyond the globe – the prospects of which we can only imagine now. Identifiably human-shaped, Robonauts are created to socialise with, and labour together with, astronauts; they share tools and work on the same complex tasks in the same environment aboard the International Space Station. In doing so, their presence might break down the separation between the living and the nonliving, giving form to Stiegler’s hypothesis regarding the ontology of technical objects, and coming to represent a mode of “being” described as “organized inert matter” (49). The robonaut is not dominated by the human, like a hand-held tool, nor is it dominating like a faceless system; it is engineered to be conducted, ‘organised’ rather than controlled. In addition to its anthropomorphic tendencies – which among other things, makes them appear more human than astronauts wearing space suits – is the robonaut’s existence as part of an assemblage of networked life that links technical objects with wet bodies into an animate system of information and matter. While this “heralds the possibility of making the technical being part of culture” (Simondon 16), it also suggests that extra-planetary digital cultures will harness what Simondon formulates as an “ensemble” of “open machines” – a system of sensitive technologies toward which the human acts as “organizer and as a living interpreter” (13). In the design of our extra-planetary envoys we are evolving toward this openness; the Robonaut, a technical object that shares in digital culture and its social and material production, might be the impetus through which the human and technological acquire a language that expresses a kind of evolutionary dialectic. As a system of inclusions that uses technologies to incorporate/socialise everything it can, including its own relationship with technical objects, digital culture in outer space clarifies how technologies might relate and “exchange information with each other through the intermediacy of the human interpreter” (Simondon 14). The Robonaut, like the tweeting astronaut, provides the test signals for what might eventually become points of communication between different modes of being. In this context, culture is collective cumulative memory; the ‘digital’ form of culture suggests an evolution of both technologic life and human life because it incorporates the development of more efficient means of storing and transmitting memory as cultural knowledge, while recognising the experience of both. Social learning and memory will first define the evolution of the Robonaut. Digital culture and the social expressed through technology – toward a shared social life and cultural landscape established in outer space – will involve the conservation, transmission and setting of common patterns that pool a composite interplay of material, neurobiologic and technologic variables. This will in turn require new practices of enculturation, conviviality with technologies, a sharing, incorporation and care. Only then might this transform into a discussion concerning the ontologies of the ‘we’. (Far from) Conclusions Hannah Arendt wrote that technologic progress could not find full expression in “normal” (3) language and that we must constantly be aware that our knowledge, politics, ethics and interactions with regard to technologies are incomplete, unformulated or unexpressed. It could be said then that our relationship with technologies is constantly beginning, that this need to keep finding new language to grasp it means that it actually progresses through its rehearsal of beginnings, through the need to maintain the productive inquisitive force of a pleasant first meeting. Yet Arendt’s idea emerges from a kind of contempt for technology and her implied separation between ‘normal’ and what could be called ‘technical’ language suggests that she privileges the lay ‘human’ tongue as the only one in which meaningful ideas can be properly expressed. What this fails to acknowledge is an appreciation of the potential richness of technical language and Arendt instead establishes a hierarchy that privileges one’s ‘natural’ language. The invocation of the term ‘normal’ is itself an admission of unequal relations with technologies. For a language to develop in which we can truly begin to express and understand the human relationship with ever-changing but ever-present technologies,, we must first allow the entrance of the language of technology into social life – it must be incorporated, learnt or translated. In the future, this might ultimately give technology a voice in a dialogue that might be half-composed of binary code. Digital culture is perhaps a forerunner of such a conversation and perhaps it is in the milieu of outer space that it could be possible to see advances in our ideas about the mutually co-constitutive relationship between the human and technical. 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