Annual ¡VAMOS! Partners’ Forum meeting held in Porto
LPRC colleagues Cameron, Edine and Luís attended a recent ¡VAMOS! meeting held at project robotics-developer INESC’s Porto facilities on the 29th and 30th of March. The purpose of the meeting was to hold the annual Partners’ Forum (PF) meeting, which was supplemented with an Advisory Board (AB) review meeting.
On the first day of the meeting, attendees divided themselves amongst two separate workshops to discuss progress on Work Packages 1 & 6, Dissemination, and Market Uptake, and Work Packages 3 & 4, System Construction, and Navigation and Awareness.
In the afternoon, both groups reconvened to attend a meeting on Work Package 5, Field Testing. During this session, the schedule and management of field-tests, site calibration and local assembly of components, and the training of personnel and site-safety were discussed and agreed upon. This careful and detailed planning is to ensure that the field tests in Devon, UK (October 2017) and in Vares, Bosnia (June 2018) will be conducted without avoidable setbacks or injury to staff.
¡VAMOS! partners attend the WP5 Field Testing workshop
The current build-status of the ¡VAMOS! mining vehicle at SMD in Newcastle.
In the morning of the second day, external Advisory Board members joined the consortium to conduct an iterative review of all project work packages 1 to 7. LPRC colleagues Edine and Cameron presented Work Package 1 and Work Package 6. After this full project review, a summary and review of project risks was conducted by Mr Jeroen van der Linden of Damen Dredging.
In the afternoon the partners toured the INESC robotics lab, where INESC partners are developing many subsea robotics technologies for ¡VAMOS! and other European projects. After this informative visit, the Advisory Board and Work Package leaders met for the final event of the two-day workshop: the Advisory Board review session. During this session, the Advisory Board put forth their critiques of various aspects of the project, and provided their insight into the technology and the developments per work package.
L-R: Cameron Sword (LPRC), Eduardo Silva (INESC), Bramley Murton (AB), Edine Bakker (LPRC), Glen Jones (AB).
Foreground (L-R): Mike Buxton (AB), Stef Kapusniak (Technical Manager), Jeroen van der Linden (Risk Manager).
The ¡VAMOS! project is now entering the final stages of the construction of all technical equipment. The consortium is on schedule in all project matters, and is looking forward to the first field tests in Southwest England this October.