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Presentation

Robotics and Autonomous Systems

At CRAS, our mission is to develop innovative robotic solutions for complex environments and multiple operations, including data gathering, inspection, mapping, surveillance, and intervention.

We work in four main areas of research: autonomous navigation; long-term deployments; sensing, mapping, and intervention; multiple platform operations.

Latest News
Robotics

INESC TEC returned to the world’s largest maritime robotics exercise

Throughout September, researchers from INESC TEC were in Troia and Sesimbra to take part in another edition of REPMUS, the world’s largest demonstration exercise with robotics and unmanned maritime vehicles.

21st October 2025

Robotics

Robotic system developed by INESC TEC successfully completes microgravity flights

INESC TEC has developed a free-flying robot, i.e., a compact and fully autonomous aerial robotic sphere, which “flew” to Canada to be tested in microgravity flights. Two INESC TEC researchers, André Santos and João Coutinho, successfully completed the parabolic flights.

16th October 2025

Robotics

INESC TEC leads scientific efforts in Portugal’s first analog space mission in a habitat

Monsaraz will host the first analog mission carried out within a habitat on Portuguese soil. The Monsaraz Mars Analog Mission will take place from 13 to 25 October in the Lago-Alqueva Astronomical Observatory (OLA). Entry into the habitat is scheduled for 2 p.m. on Monday, 13 October, with scientists expected to exit at the same time thirteen days later, on 25 October. INESC TEC is responsible for the scientific and technological leadership of the mission.

08th October 2025

Sailing, sailing: INESC TEC technology crosses the ocean and reaches the shores of India

From Europe’s gateway to the Atlantic, INESC TEC researcher Nuno Cruz travelled south to India to showcase, off the coast of the Bay of Bengal, the Institute’s marine robotics technologies and solutions. 

01st October 2025

Robotics

INESC TEC prototype represented at the world’s leading Space event is days away from a parabolic flight

For the first time, INESC TEC is represented at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC), the most important global event in the Space sector. Researchers André Santos and João Coutinho travelled to Australia to present a prototype which, in just a few days, will head to Canada to be tested on a parabolic flight.

30th September 2025

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Featured Projects

EVA_AMPA

EVA - Levantamentos Visuais e Filmagens

2025-2025

UPWELLING

Unlocking Potential for Workforce Excellence, Leadership, and Innovation in the Next-Gen Blue Economy

2025-2027

MP_LevantGeofisico

Mar Profundo para operações de levantamento geofísico 2025

2025-2025

NAUTILUS

Navigation and Autonomous Underwater Technology for Infrastructure Long-term Unmanned Surveillance

2025-2028

OPMAR2_EPISEA

Operações de inspeção de equipamentos marítimos para produção de energia offshore

2025-2025

VICTORIOUS

INNOVATIVE AI-ENHANCED, REMOTELY POWERED, INDIRECT FIRE OBSERVATION SYSTEM UTILIZING UNMANNED VEHICLES

2025-2028

Silos_Portos

Inspeção interior e exterior dos Silos de Cereais Porto de Leixões

2025-2025

AI4PORTS

AI techniques for anomaly assessment in Port Structures

2025-2026

INESCTEC.OCEAN

Centre of Excellence in Ocean Research and Engineering

2025-2030

AEROSUB

Automated Inspection Robots for Surface, Aerial and Underwater Substructures

2024-2028

SEAGUARD

Sea Environmental Awareness and Guard enhanced with Unmanned AI Robotic Detection

2024-2027

ADVISOR

Cooperative Missions of Autonomous Vehicle Swarms for Surveillance Tasks

2024-2027

NuClim

Nuclear observations to improve Climate research and GHG emission estimates

2024-2028

BioProtect

ADVANCING AREA-BASED MANAGEMENT TOOLS TO ACCELERATE THE PROTECTION AND RESTORATION OF MARINE BIODIVERSITY ACROSS THE EUROPEAN SEA BASINS

2024-2028

SENTINEL

SpacE operatioNs, moniToring, and mappINg ExpLorer: a smart Orb-system

2024-2025

TALOS

roboTics and Artificial intelligence Living labs improving Operations in PV Scenarios

2023-2026

NETTAGPlus

Preventing, avoiding and mitigating environmental impacts of fishing gears and associated marine litter

2023-2026

NMicroARTIC

Nitrogen Microbiome in the Changing Artic

2023-2026

ATE

Alliance for Energy Transition

2023-2026

TRIDENT

Technology based impact assessment tool foR sustaInable, transparent Deep sEa miNing exploraTion and exploitation

2023-2027

MineIO

A Holistic Digital Mine 4.0 Ecosystem

2023-2026

AIRSHIP

AUTONOMOUS FLYING SHIPS FOR INTER-ISLAND AND INLAND WATERS TRANSPORT

2023-2026

AOWINDE

ATLANTIC OFFSHORE WIND ENERGY

2023-2025

AEROGANP

Creación de un eje transfronterizo de investigación y transferencia de conocimiento en el sector aeronáutico y espacial en la Eurorregión Galicia-Norte de Portugal

2023-2026

SEAWINGS

Sea/Air Interphasic Wing-in-Ground Effect Autonomous Drones

2022-2026

OVERWATCH

Integrated holographic management map for safety and crisis events

2022-2026

NEXUS

Innovation Pact - Digital and Green Transition

2022-2026

NewSpacePortugal

Agenda New Space Portugal

2022-2026

Drivolution

Agenda Drivolution

2022-2026

StoneByPortugal

SUISTANABLE StoneByPortugal: Valorização da Pedra Natural para um futuro digital, sustentável e qualificado

2022-2026

FLYPASS

FoiL boat using clean energY for PASSenger transportation

2022-2024

TIMREX

T-Shaped Master Programme for Innovative Mineral Resource Exploration

2022-2024

FIRELOGUE

Cross-sector dialogue for Wildfire Risk Management

2021-2025

MAGPIE

sMArt Green Ports as Integrated Efficient multimodal hubs

2021-2026

EUSCORES

EUropean - Scalable and Complementary Offshore Renewable Energy Sources

2021-2027

Connect2Oceans

Connecting Atlantic and Arctic Oceans to Decipher Climate Change Impact on Plankton Microbiome Functions

2021-2024

MARIMAR

eMbarcação Autónoma para Remoção de lIxo MARinho

2020-2023

PORT XXI

Space Enabled Sustainable Port Services

2020-2022

SHIELD

Safeguard Heritage in Endangered Looted Districts

2020-2023

REV@CONSTRUCTION

Digital construction revolution

2020-2023

FLY_PT

Mobilizar a indústria aeronáutica nacional para a disrupção no transporte aéreo urbano do futuro

2020-2023

K2D

Knowledge and Data from the Deep to Space

2020-2023

NEWSAT

Development of a compact integrated sensor and satellite for earth observation

2020-2023

inSITE

inSITE. Insitu ore grading system using LIBS in harsh environments

2020-2022

ATLANTIS

The Atlantic Testing Platform for Maritime Robotics: New Frontiers for Inspection and Maintenance of Offshore Energy Infrastructures

2020-2023

UNEXUP

UNEXMIN Upscaling

2020-2022

QuALTOS

Quality Assurance in Long Term Observation Systems

2020-2022

Sail2020

Space-Atmosphere-Ocean Interactions in the marine boundary Layer

2020-2020

DEEPFIELD

DeepField- Deep Learning in Field Robotics: from conceptualization towards implementation

2019-2023

ESAPlastics

De-risk assessment: spectrometer for marine litter

2019-2021

SPRING

Strategic planning for water resources and implementation of novel biotechnical treatment solutions and good practices

2019-2024

Prince

Preparedness Response for CBRNE INCidEnts

2019-2022

Nettag

Tagging fishing gears and enhancing on board best-practices to promote waste free fisheries

2019-2021

Mine_Heritage

Historical Mining – tracing and learning from ancient materials and mining technology

2019-2021

NESSIE

moNitoring offshorE StructureS with robotIc systems intEgration

2019-2023

GROW

Long-range broadband underwater wireless communications

2018-2021

DIIUS

Distributed perceptIon for inspectIon of aqUatic Structures

2018-2022

ENDURANCE

Underwater wireless energy and communications enabling long-term deep-sea presence

2018-2020

HiperSea

Sistema Hiperbárico para Recolha e Manutenção de Organismos do Mar Profundo

2018-2022

BIOREM

Bioremediation of hydrocarbon pollutants by autochthonous microorganisms in aquatic environment

2018-2021

INTENDU

Integrated Technologies Longterm Deployment of Robotic Underwater platforms

2018-2021

FEEDFIRST

Desenvolvimento de uma nova tecnologia para cultivo de larvas de peixes à primeira alimentação

2018-2021

PROTOATLANTIC

Development and validation of a program for the prototyping and exploitation of innovative ideas

2017-2023

TEC4Sea

Modular Platform for Research, Test and Validation of Technologies supporting a Sustainable Blue Economy

2017-2022

EMSO-PT

Observatório Europeu Multidisciplinar do Fundo do Mar e Coluna de Água - Portugal

2017-2023

SpilLess

First line response to oil spills based on native microorganisms cooperation (SpilLess)

2017-2019

SIDENAV

Smart infrastructure for deep sea navigation

2016-2018

RAWFIE

Road-, Air- and Water-based Future Internet Experimentation

2016-2019

MyTag-CRAS

Integrating natural and artificial tags to reconstruct fish migrations and ontogenetic niche shifts

2016-2019

DeepFloat

Sistema de variação de flutuação para aplicações submarinas

2016-2018

UNEXMIN-CRAS

Autonomous Underwater Explorer for Flooded Mines

2016-2019

CORAL-SENSORS

CORAL – Sustainable Ocean Exploitation: Tools and Sensors

2016-2018

STRONGMAR-CRAS

STRengthening MARritime Technology Research Center

2016-2018

CORAL-TOOLS

CORAL – Sustainable Ocean Exploitation: Tools and Sensors

2016-2018

EMSODEV

EMSO implementation and operation: DEVelopment of instrument module

2015-2018

MarineEye

MarinEye - A prototype for multitrophic oceanic monitoring

2015-2017

BLUECOM+

Connecting Humans and Systems at Remote Ocean Areas using Cost-effective Broadband Communications

2015-2017

ENDURE

Enabling Long-Term Deployments of Underwater Robotic Platforms in Remote Oceanic Locations

2015-2017

VAMOS

Viable Alternative Mine Operating System

2015-2019

SUNNY

Smart UNmanned aerial vehicle sensor Network for detection of border crossing and illegal entrY

2014-2018

ICARUS-CRAS

Integrated Components for Assisted Rescue and Unmanned Search operations

2012-2016

Team
001

Laboratories

Robotics and Autonomous Systems Laboratory

Publications

CRAS Publications

View all Publications

2026

A framework for supporting the reproducibility of computational experiments in multiple scientific domains

Authors
Costa, L; Barbosa, S; Cunha, J;

Publication
Future Gener. Comput. Syst.

Abstract
In recent years, the research community, but also the general public, has raised serious questions about the reproducibility and replicability of scientific work. Since many studies include some kind of computational work, these issues are also a technological challenge, not only in computer science, but also in most research domains. Computational replicability and reproducibility are not easy to achieve due to the variety of computational environments that can be used. Indeed, it is challenging to recreate the same environment via the same frameworks, code, programming languages, dependencies, and so on. We propose a framework, known as SciRep, that supports the configuration, execution, and packaging of computational experiments by defining their code, data, programming languages, dependencies, databases, and commands to be executed. After the initial configuration, the experiments can be executed any number of times, always producing exactly the same results. Our approach allows the creation of a reproducibility package for experiments from multiple scientific fields, from medicine to computer science, which can be re-executed on any computer. The produced package acts as a capsule, holding absolutely everything necessary to re-execute the experiment. To evaluate our framework, we compare it with three state-of-the-art tools and use it to reproduce 18 experiments extracted from published scientific articles. With our approach, we were able to execute 16 (89%) of those experiments, while the others reached only 61%, thus showing that our approach is effective. Moreover, all the experiments that were executed produced the results presented in the original publication. Thus, SciRep was able to reproduce 100% of the experiments it could run. © 2025 The Authors

2025

Real-Time Registration of 3D Underwater Sonar Scans

Authors
Ferreira, A; Almeida, J; Matos, A; Silva, E;

Publication
ROBOTICS

Abstract
Due to space and energy restrictions, lightweight autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are usually fitted with low-power processing units, which limits the ability to run demanding applications in real time during the mission. However, several robotic perception tasks reveal a parallel nature, where the same processing routine is applied for multiple independent inputs. In such cases, leveraging parallel execution by offloading tasks to a GPU can greatly enhance processing speed. This article presents a collection of generic matrix manipulation kernels, which can be combined to develop parallelized perception applications. Taking advantage of those building blocks, we report a parallel implementation for the 3DupIC algorithm-a probabilistic scan matching method for sonar scan registration. Tests demonstrate the algorithm's real-time performance, enabling 3D sonar scan matching to be executed in real time onboard the EVA AUV.

2025

The SAIL dataset of marine atmospheric electric field observations over the Atlantic Ocean

Authors
Barbosa, S; Dias, N; Almeida, C; Amaral, G; Ferreira, A; Camilo, A; Silva, E;

Publication
EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCE DATA

Abstract
A unique dataset of marine atmospheric electric field observations over the Atlantic Ocean is described. The data are relevant not only for atmospheric electricity studies, but more generally for studies of the Earth's atmosphere and climate variability, as well as space-Earth interaction studies. In addition to the atmospheric electric field data, the dataset includes simultaneous measurements of other atmospheric variables, including gamma radiation, visibility, and solar radiation. These ancillary observations not only support interpretation and understanding of the atmospheric electric field data, but also are of interest in themselves. The entire framework from data collection to final derived datasets has been duly documented to ensure traceability and reproducibility of the whole data curation chain. All the data, from raw measurements to final datasets, are preserved in data repositories with a corresponding assigned DOI. Final datasets are available from the Figshare repository (https://figshare.com/projects/SAIL_Data/178500, ), and computational notebooks containing the code used at every step of the data curation chain are available from the Zenodo repository (https://zenodo.org/communities/sail, Project SAIL community, 2025).

2025

Evaluation of Deep Learning Models for Polymetallic Nodule Detection and Segmentation in Seafloor Imagery

Authors
Loureiro, G; Dias, A; Almeida, J; Martins, A; Silva, E;

Publication
JOURNAL OF MARINE SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

Abstract
Climate change has led to the need to transition to clean technologies, which depend on an number of critical metals. These metals, such as nickel, lithium, and manganese, are essential for developing batteries. However, the scarcity of these elements and the risks of disruptions to their supply chain have increased interest in exploiting resources on the deep seabed, particularly polymetallic nodules. As the identification of these nodules must be efficient to minimize disturbance to the marine ecosystem, deep learning techniques have emerged as a potential solution. Traditional deep learning methods are based on the use of convolutional layers to extract features, while recent architectures, such as transformer-based architectures, use self-attention mechanisms to obtain global context. This paper evaluates the performance of representative models from both categories across three tasks: detection, object segmentation, and semantic segmentation. The initial results suggest that transformer-based methods perform better in most evaluation metrics, but at the cost of higher computational resources. Furthermore, recent versions of You Only Look Once (YOLO) have obtained competitive results in terms of mean average precision.

2025

A Multimodal Perception System for Precise Landing of UAVs in Offshore Environments

Authors
Claro, RM; Neves, FSP; Pinto, AMG;

Publication
JOURNAL OF FIELD ROBOTICS

Abstract
The integration of precise landing capabilities into unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is crucial for enabling autonomous operations, particularly in challenging environments such as the offshore scenarios. This work proposes a heterogeneous perception system that incorporates a multimodal fiducial marker, designed to improve the accuracy and robustness of autonomous landing of UAVs in both daytime and nighttime operations. This work presents ViTAL-TAPE, a visual transformer-based model, that enhance the detection reliability of the landing target and overcomes the changes in the illumination conditions and viewpoint positions, where traditional methods fail. VITAL-TAPE is an end-to-end model that combines multimodal perceptual information, including photometric and radiometric data, to detect landing targets defined by a fiducial marker with 6 degrees-of-freedom. Extensive experiments have proved the ability of VITAL-TAPE to detect fiducial markers with an error of 0.01 m. Moreover, experiments using the RAVEN UAV, designed to endure the challenging weather conditions of offshore scenarios, demonstrated that the autonomous landing technology proposed in this work achieved an accuracy up to 0.1 m. This research also presents the first successful autonomous operation of a UAV in a commercial offshore wind farm with floating foundations installed in the Atlantic Ocean. These experiments showcased the system's accuracy, resilience and robustness, resulting in a precise landing technology that extends mission capabilities of UAVs, enabling autonomous and Beyond Visual Line of Sight offshore operations.

Facts & Figures

40Researchers

2016

7R&D Employees

2020

7Proceedings in indexed conferences

2020

Contacts