Structured light is a robust and accurate method for 3D range imaging in which one or more light patterns are projected onto the scene and observed with an off-axis camera. Commercial sensors typically utilize DMD-or LCD-based LED projectors, which produce good results but have a number of drawbacks, e.g. limited speed, limited depth of focus, large sensitivity to ambient light and somewhat low light efficiency.We present a 3D imaging system based on a laser light source and a novel tip-tilt-piston micro-mirror. Optical interference is utilized to create sinusoidal fringe patterns. The setup allows fast and easy control of both the frequency and the phase of the fringe patterns by altering the axes of the micro-mirror. For 3D reconstruction we have adapted a Dual Frequency Phase Shifting method which gives robust range measurements with sub-millimeter accuracy.The use of interference for generating sine patterns provides high light efficiency and good focusing properties. The use of a laser and a bandpass filter allows easy removal of ambient light. The fast response of the micro-mirror in combination with a high-speed camera and real-time processing on the GPU allows highly accurate 3D range image acquisition at video rates.

In previous decades, the vision-based navigation problem based on 2D imaging has been largely studied and applied in space, for rendezvous and docking, as well as rover navigation, or entry, descent and landing. By providing measurement of the third dimension (range), 3D camera technology looks a promising alternative for many applications. Stereoscopic camera is one option to measure the third coordinate, but relies on significant CPU capabilities, which are generally not available for space applications. Scanning LIDAR (LIght detection and ranging) is also an existing solution, but it is relatively large and heavy and the refresh rate, lifetime and reliability are mainly determined by moving parts. 3D time-of-flight (TOF) technology (including flash LIDARs) offers a reliable alternative. By illuminating a whole scene at a time and thus providing a whole array image, there is no need for complex processing nor moving mechanisms, which clearly appears as an advantage for space applications. This paper presents the ongoing study conducted under ESA contract in the field of 3D TOF technology. Its goal is to evaluate the suitability of a 3D TOF camera for space applications, to derive requirements and a preliminary design, and finally to create and test a breadboard model. Performance budget, cost, and a development plan of a versatile spatialized 3D TOF camera are also outputs of the study, in addition to a high-fidelity simulator, allowing further studies by generating representative images and depth maps. To fulfill this project, a European team has been created, gathering Thales Alenia Space, Terma and SINTEF.

Ensuring human health and safety is a prime concern in spacecraft as well as in other human-occupied enclosed spaces, including aircraft cabins and cockpits. The air quality is of particular importance. Much as in other closed or semi-closed habitats, sources of air contaminants in spacecraft include off-gassing (from structural materials, electronic equipment etc.), system failures (leaks, overheating, trace gas control system breakthrough etc.), and the crew itself (metabolic products). It is for this reason that ESA has a long-term research and development programme in which SINTEF is developing advanced air quality monitoring technology (calibration and analysis) in co-operation with Kayser–Threde GmbH, Germany (hardware and system). The key technologies employed are FTIR spectroscopy, simulations of the measurement process, and partial least squares (PLS) analysis, a family of multivariate statistical methods applied for calibration. The software includes novel compensation methods for hardware insufficiencies. ANITA was launched on Space Shuttle STS-118 in August 2007. After installation and start-up in the US laboratory Destiny on the ISS in September (Fig. 1), the system successfully monitored the trace gases as well as the background gases water vapour, carbon dioxide and methane in the ISS cabin air until August 2008. ANITA provided considerable new information on the trace gas dynamics in the ISS air; most of the gases had never before been measured with high time resolution. Some gases had never been measured in the ISS air at all. A further improved system, ANITA2, is currently under development, aiming for permanent operation on the ISS. ANITA3 is also a future possibility for space exploration missions.

Abstract High uptime of petroleum plants, simple logistics, and good Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) conditions are all key factors for a successful petroleum industry. These issues need particular attention when facing new challenges with, e.g., production in more remote areas, but are also highly relevant for many current petroleum installations. Automation and remote supervision and control are both important areas which can address these challenges. To this end, robots are already contributing subsea, but also have the potential to contribute with significant benefits within both the offshore topside and onshore petroleum industry. Such robot technology, often termed offshore robotics, is currently not commercially available and a large scale joint effort is required in order to realize its inherent potential. Offshore robotics has been a topic of research and development for quite some years and relevant concepts and demonstrators have been developed. However, there are still significant challenges that need to be met in order to take advantage of the opportunities that robots can provide and realize commercial solutions. In this paper, we describe some of the important challenges to be met for enabling this inherent potential. There are both technical and organizational challenges, where the latter include, e.g., building acceptance for new technologies and responsibility issues in connection with remote operations. We also elaborate on key opportunities represented by use cases for robotics within the petroleum industry. A focus is on inspection, maintenance and emergency handling operations. The state of the art on offshore robotics is presented including the activity within this field at Statoil and Petrobras. Successful solutions to the use cases can lead to improved HSE (e.g., fewer people in exposed areas), simpler logistics (e.g., less helicopter transportation), and increased uptime (e.g., through early fault detection and intervention).

Following the successful European precursor mission ANITA1 (Analysing Interferometer for Ambient Air) operating on ISS for 11 months in 2007 and 2008, the next generation system ANITA2 is in the design and breadboarding phase. The complementary ANITA1 information on ISS air conditions has shown the advantages of an optical sensor with high time resolution and the simultaneous detection and quantification of the most important trace gases in the ISS atmosphere. The data have delivered surprising results on the dynamics of the crewed cabin atmosphere. Events occurring during the system operation like e.g. Shuttle docking, leakage in the Russian cooling system, detection of an unknown gas, and variable activity levels for the crew, could be identified, analysed, and assigned to the different happenings.

The successful ANITA1 (Analysing Interferometer for Ambient Air) mission on ISS has proven the usability of a sophisticated optical sensor for the simultaneous detection and quantification of 32 relevant trace gases in the cabin atmosphere. The instrument ran for 11 months in 2007 and 2008 leading to unique new findings and insights into the behaviour and dynamics of the ISS atmosphere. The successor instrument ANITA2 is now in the development phase, considering all lessons learned from the ANITA1 instrument. This includes ANITA1 noise effects, which in between could be simulated on ground in the laboratory. The new instrument design thus reflects an approach for a system with improvements in the sensitivity of at least one order of magnitude The ANITA2 mission is planned for five years of (automatic) operation on ISS, where the system relatively easily can be accommodated, since it consumes nothing but power.

ANITA applies a modified commercial FTIR instrument and novel analysis software that solves most challenges of multi-gas measurement. Its fast and fully automatic analyses make it suitable for air quality monitoring and other multi-component measurements.

In this work a general optimization package is developed for CO2SIM. Three different methods of solving a specified case study have been tested. It gives a procedure which can be used for rapidly finding optimum operation conditions for a regeneration system in a CO2 removal plant. The procedure is exemplified for a CO2 absorption plant. The optimization procedure has been added as a new feature to the CO2SIM simulation software. To be able to examine the optimization module in a system perspective, campaign data from a pilot rig absorption/desorption unit has been used for initial comparison and validation. Thereafter the optimization tool was used to find out if the given case could be run in a more energy efficient manner.It was found that finding optimums by "auto simulation of a matrix structure" was the most robust method. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

ANITA (Analysing Interferometer for Ambient Air) is a flight experiment precursor for a permanent continuous air quality monitoring system on the ISS (International Space Station).For the safety of the crew, ANITA can detect and quantify quasi-online and simultaneously 33 gas compounds in the air with ppm or sub-ppm detection limits. The autonomous measurement system is based on FTIR (Fourier Transform Infra-Red spectroscopy). The system represents a versatile air quality monitor, allowing for the first time the detection and monitoring of trace gas dynamics, with high time resolution, in a spacecraft atmosphere.ANITA operated on the ISS from September 2007 to August 2008. This paper summarises the results of ANITA's air analyses and compares results to other measurements acquired on ISS during the operational period. The main basis of comparison is NASA's set of grab samples taken onboard the ISS and analysed on ground applying various GC-based (Gas Chromatography) and GC/MS (Mass Spectrometry) systems. Comparison with other real-time instruments aboard ISS included the Volatile Organic Analyzer (VOA), the Compound Specific Analyzer - Combustion Products (CSA-CP), the Carbon Dioxide Monitor (CDM), and the Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA).

The advanced air monitor ANITA (Analysing Interferometer for Ambient Air) accomplished a highly successful mission, operating for 11 months on ISS in 2007 and 2008. Detecting simultaneously 32 gases, ANITA could provide new findings in the behaviour and dynamics of crewed cabin air. The successor system ANITA2 is now in a preliminary design and planning phase. ANITA2 considers the lessons learned cycles with ANITA leading to different approaches for an improved system definition. ANITA noise effects could be simulated on ground in the laboratory enabling the engineers to design a system avoiding the observed noise. The design for the successor unit ANITA2 will thus benefit from these on-ground findings. The next mission is planned for five years of automatic operation on ISS, where the system relatively easily can be accommodated, since it consumes nothing but power.

Future normally-unmanned oil platforms offer potentially significantly lower commissioning and operation costs than their current manned counterparts. The ability to initiate and perform remote inspection and maintenance (I&M) operations is crucial for maintaining such platforms. This paper presents a system solution, including key components such as a 3D robot vision system, a robot tool and a control architecture for remote I&M operations on processes similar to those on topside oil platforms. In particular, a case study on how to automatically replace a battery in a wireless process sensor is investigated. A novel robot tool for removing and re-attaching the sensor lid has been designed. Moreover, a robot control architecture for remote control of industrial-type robot manipulators is presented. A 3D robot vision system for localizing the sensor lid and the battery has been developed. The system utilizes structured light, using an off-the-shelf projector and a standard machine vision camera. A novel, robust and fast vision algorithm called 3D-MaMa has been adapted to work for object localization and pose estimation in complex scenes, in our case the process equipment in our lab facility. Experimental results from our lab facility are presented which describe a series of battery replacement operations for various unknown positions of the wireless sensor, and we report on accuracies and success ratios. The experiments demonstrate that the described vision system is able to recover the full pose and orientation of an object, and that the results are directly applicable for controlling advanced robot contact operations. Moreover, the custom-built lid operation tool demonstrates successful results.

ANITA (Analysing Interferometer for Ambient Air) is a flight experiment precursor for a permanent continuous air quality monitoring system on the ISS (International Space Station). For the safety of the crew, ANITA can detect and quantify quasi-online and simultaneously 33 gas compounds in the air with ppm or sub-ppm detection limits. The autonomous measurement system is based on FTIR (Fourier Transform Infra-Red spectroscopy). The system represents a versatile air quality monitor, allowing for the first time the detection and monitoring of trace gas dynamics in a spacecraft atmosphere. ANITA operated on the ISS from September 2007 to August 2008. This paper summarizes the results of ANITA s air analyses with emphasis on comparisons to other measurements. The main basis of comparison is NASA s set of grab samples taken onboard the ISS and analysed on ground applying various GC-based (Gas Chromatography) systems.

A benchmarking facility for snake robot locomotion is presented, including the design of a snake-like robot extended with a sensor setup combining three-dimensional vision and an array of force sensors to register friction and impulse forces. A surrounding, modular environment consisting of a reconfigurable obstacle course and a ceiling mounted camera system is also presented. This enables research into adaptive obstacle-based and non-obstacle-based movement patterns for robotic snakes. Experimental results show possibilities for detailed data analysis of snake robot locomotion. Thus, the facility may be a common reference on which to experiment and evaluate future ideas.

After the launch to the ISS (International Space Station) with The Space Shuttle flight STS 118 13A.1 on August 9th 2007 and the accommodation in the US lab Destiny, the air quality monitor ANITA (Analysing Interferometer for Ambient Air) has been successfully put into operation. ANITA is a technology demonstrator flight experiment being able to continuously monitor with high time resolution the air conditions within the crewed cabins of the ISS. The system has its origin in a long term ESA technology development programme. The ANITA mission itself is an ESA-NASA cooperative project. ESA is responsible for the provision of the HW, the data acquisition and data evaluation. NASA's responsibilities are launch, accommodation in the US Lab Destiny, operation and data download.The ANITA air analyser is currently calibrated to detect and quantify online and with high time resolution 33 gases simultaneously with down to sub-ppm detection limits. In addition the system has automatic warning capabilities covering possible malfunctions, surprising gases, and gas concentrations above preset limits. However, owing to the experimental character of this ANITA mission, no measurement results are on-line visible to the crew.ANITA's standard, fully automatic mode of operation applies direct air sampling in front of the system. Whenever wanted, air samples for automatic analyses can be taken from any human-accessible position in the ISS or any connected spacecraft and fed to ANITA, applying gas bags and a hand pump.ANITA is an on-orbit test experiment and a precursor for a permanent continuous trace gas monitoring system on the ISS - ANITA II. It further represents a precursor system for future air monitoring in crewed vehicles being developed for the Human Space Exploration programme.This paper is part 2 in a series of two papers. The first paper describes the HW and the ANITA mission itself. This paper is dedicated to the data analysis, including the handling of special challenges and some measurement results.On the ISS, ANITA has measured several gases that, before now, have never properly been measured before, including one unexpected gas. And many gases have for the first time been measured with high time resolution. The observed gas dynamics clearly show effects from spacecraft visits to the ISS, crew activities, the number of crew present, and the functioning of the air revitalisation systems. ANITA gives detailed time resolved information on very different gases such as carbon dioxide and monoxide, methane, ammonia, perfluoro propane, sulphur hexafluoride, siloxanes, and alcohols.It was also demonstrated how ANITA was used to detect and quantify an unexpected gas in the ISS air, and how the system calibration could be updated from ground.The work described has been performed under contract of the European Space Agency.

Current systems for automatic processing of salmon are not able to remove all bones from freshly slaughtered salmon. This is because some of the bones are attached to the flesh by tendons, and the fillet is damaged or the bones broken if the bones are pulled out. This paper describes a camera based system for determining the tendon positions in the tissue, so that the tendon can be cut with a knife and the bones removed. The location of the tendons deep in the tissue is estimated based on the position of a texture pattern on the fillet surface. Algorithms for locating this line-looking pattern, in the presence of several other similar-looking lines and significant other texture are described. The algorithm uses a model of the pattern's location to achieve precision and speed, followed by a RANSAC/MLESAC inspired line fitting procedure. Close to the neck the pattern is barely visible; this is handled through a greedy search algorithm. We achieve a precision better than 3 mm for 78% of the fish using maximum 2 seconds processing time.