A presentation about underwater robotic systems by Alexandre Cardaillac, and the challenges of seeing in extreme environments.
Imaging the seafloor using a robotic platform and overcoming the underwater light attenuation. Image courtesy of Alexandre Cardaillac.
In this presentation, Alexandre Cardaillac will address the topic of underwater vision. In particular, how can the lack of natural light be overcome to explore and understand the oceans and their assets. Light is severely affected by the properties of water, resulting in a number of effects that considerably degrade images captured by an ordinary camera. Methods to improve underwater vision using artificial light will be discussed, but also alternative approaches, such as hyperspectral imaging and acoustic imaging which provide different ways to see underwater.
"Visions Cultures" is convened by Mark Ledbury and Nick Croggon as part of the Power Institute’s philanthropically funded Visual Understanding Initiative.
People
Alexandre Cardaillac
Alexandre Cardaillac received his PhD in engineering with the Department of Marine Technology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, as part of the Applied Underwater Robotics Laboratory. He is now a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Australian Center For Robotics at the University of Sydney and the ARIAM Hub where he studies underwater perception and how it can be used to improve the autonomy and situational awareness of underwater vehicles. His work focuses on combining visual and acoustic data to create hybrid representations of underwater environments.
Daniela Helbig
Daniela Helbig is Senior Lecturer in the School of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney. She received her MSc (Physics) from Free University Berlin, and her PhD (History of Science) from Harvard. A historian of technology and media, her research explores the roles of technology in historical practices. Her work has focused on notions of memory and experience in aviation research in Weimar- and Nazi Germany, and on transformations of historiography through remote sensing and geospatial representation technologies from the early twentieth century into the present.
