Eduardo Silva

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).

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.

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.

Abstract
The deep seabed is composed of heterogeneous ecosystems, containing diverse habitats for marine life. Consequently, understanding the geological and ecological characteristics of the seabed's features is a key step for many applications. The majority of approaches commonly use optical and acoustic sensors to address these tasks; however, each sensor has limitations associated with the underwater environment. This paper presents a survey of the main techniques and trends related to seabed characterization, highlighting approaches in three tasks: classification, detection, and segmentation. The bibliography is categorized into four approaches: statistics-based, classical machine learning, deep learning, and object-based image analysis. The differences between the techniques are presented, and the main challenges for deep sea research and potential directions of study are outlined.

Abstract
This paper presents the implementation of an innovative solution based on heterogeneous autonomous vehicles to tackle maritime pollution (in particular, oil spills). This solution is based on native microbial consortia with bioremediation capacity, and the adaptation of air and surface autonomous vehicles for in situ release of autochthonous microorganisms (bioaugmentation) and nutrients (biostimulation). By doing so, these systems can be applied as the first line of the response to pollution incidents from several origins that may occur inside ports, around industrial and extraction facilities, or in the open sea during transport activities in a fast, efficient, and low-cost way. The paper describes the work done in the development of a team of autonomous vehicles able to carry as payload, native organisms to naturally degrade oil spills (avoiding the introduction of additional chemical or biological additives), and the development of a multi-robot framework for efficient oil spill mitigation. Field tests have been performed in Portugal and Spain's harbors, with a simulated oil spill, and the coordinate oil spill task between the autonomous surface vehicle (ASV) ROAZ and the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) STORK has been validated.