Unmanned Vehicles are part of our lives and yet their true potential is yet to be realised.  The presentation will consider many benefits that UVS bring, from saving lives to defending our shores, from delivering scientific understanding to delivering goods.  Many different applications will be illustrated to demonstrate versatility, and ideas for future use considered.  A particular focus will be given to UAVs and their collection and management of vast quantities of remote sensed data, drawing upon Ordnance Survey experience. Equally, we are seeing much cross-over with automation and the internet of things, and a realisation of the importance of laws and policies need to regulate UVS.  Looking to the future, the next generation of UVS, High Altitude Platforms, provide further opportunity for governments and businesses, whether in defence, communications, mapping or disaster response.

The Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) technology has been playing an increasingly important role in Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) business. It has given PDO a technological edge over traditional ways.
 
PDO has been using different types of multi-rotor and short range fixed wing battery operated UAS’s for a variety of applications such as; surveying & mapping, asset inspections, flare tip inspections, engineering progress monitoring, emergency response, locations overviews, high resolution/3D photogrammetry, support for engineering design and planning and outcrops mapping.
 
It is important to note that the associated different types of sensors in use by these systems creates huge amount of information that help to make the right decision at the right time and plan appropriate course of remedial action.
 
Having seen the added value this technology brings to the business, PDO is now looking at extending the service to be part of the portfolio of instruments survey crews use in the field for their day to day work.
Besides having fast and accurate collected data, high resolution geo-referenced aerial images, the users are now focusing their energy on making use of the data analysis rather than worrying about acquiring it.
 
The paper will also shed light on the solutions driven from these applications, highlight challenges faced, and summarize the business value providing insights on the processes from acquisition, to processing and finally publishing. A good testimony of “Acquire once, use many times” philosophy. An attempt to provide a future outlook on the recent development in this area will also be highlighted. 

Underwater vehicles have gained a widespread interest in the last decades, from various research communities (design, actuation, communication, perception, modelling, navigation, control, etc), given the multiple tasks they can accomplish. Their applications are multiple and various in different fields such as dams’ inspection, oil and gas offshore industry, fish farms, wind parks, hydroelectric power stations, underwater archeology, ocean cartography, air crash and environmental investigations, etc.
However, a new set of applications is more and more emerging, and demanding intervention capabilities, such as maintenance tasks in submerged offshore infrastructures, cabled sensor networks, pipelines, etc. These tasks are nowadays addressed using manned submersibles (called also work-class ROVs), equipped with teleoperated manipulators. When the vehicle is intended to perform intervention tasks, it should mainly be equipped with a manipulator arm. The augmented vehicle is then called Underwater Vehicle Manipulator System (UVMS). Whatever the application in underwater inspection or intervention, the development of control strategies is one of the main research topics in this field. Although, control of underwater vehicles is a thoroughly investigated subject, it remains an open research problem, especially for autonomous intervention tasks and more for coordination intervention tasks. One of the important challenging issues in the control of UVMS is how to exploit and coordinate their degrees of freedom to accomplish the required task.
This talk will be focused on control challenges of underwater vehicles for inspection and manipulation tasks. The proposed control solutions will then be presented and illustrated through real-time experiments on different underwater vehicles.

The drones become prominent in our daily life. It started to be used widely in an accelerating pace. The National Survey Authority plays an important role in this sense as part of its responsibilities and roles. It gives permissions for the aerial photography and provide security observer during the process of photography.

Faculty Club Annex

As leaders in the future mobility space, General Motors is excited to join the first ever Unmanned Systems Conference at Sultan Qaboos University, and engage in an in-depth discussion with academics, fellow industry actors and the creative minds of the next generation of STEM leaders. Delivered as a keynote address of GM’s development across the four trends changing mobility – autonomous vehicles, alternative propulsion and connected and sharing, the presentation will act as a platform and will drive greater discussion with participants and entities at the conference on current adoption and timelines for alternative propulsion, regulation requirements and partnerships for consumer awareness and education as well as industry movement in mobility and its role in solutions for real-life challenges across climate, access and safety.

This invited talk will start by addressing the main issues on whether a drone is an aircraft from the regulatory perspective point of view stressing on the important differences between manned aircraft versus drone.
The talk will also present the core issues related to drones according to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) which is a United Nations Organization responsible for the development of safe navigation that is generally used by pilots and the aviation industry for flight planning. In Oman, the Public Authority for Civil Aviation (PACA) is the body that regulates all aspects of civil aviation activities to be in line with international standards ensuring safety, security and environmental protection. In addition to this role, PACA is doing considerable efforts as a part of global movement to regulate drones activity in Oman. The speaker will also elaborate on the advantages and disadvantages of drones.

This presentation is going to shed light on the importance of having a Common Operating Picture (COP) for Emergency Response and preparedness. A GIS COP for Emergency Response aims at consolidating efforts from different parties into one common emergency preparedness and response unified web map interface. This interface integrates variety of information from different range of sources providing tailored views to different stakeholders that is centrally controlled by an Incident Command (IC). On a corporate level, setting up the COP for emergency response proves to be indispensible for a focused high level decision making. Geomatics in PDO has been on Duty call for emergency for a long time and now with the new vision of GIS COP for emergency, the GIS participation is going to be more vital for the company.
The GIS role on the Common Operating Picture is to integrate different datasets for the surface features in order to facilitate situational awareness of the geographical place where the emergency response is taking place. This integration of datasets gives a bird view on the emergency situation to the incident command and thus on spot command briefing becomes available.
While Geomatics role on the time of emergency is pivotal, it is actually preceded by data gathering for the entire concession area that PDO Operates. In the data preparation task a number of Geomatics resources and personnel are utilized such as Remote Sensing, Mobile Asset Tracking, Survey operation, and videos and pictures from drones. These are to guide in the real-time analysis, information management and decision making regarding the incidents while they are happening.
By utilizing the GIS COP in PDO, we believe the reaped benefits for PDO as a whole will be invaluable to carry out focused and practical emergency response to incidents that may affect the Oil and Gas business. And now, we are looking forward to advancing our solutions and expertise on COP for emergency by utilizing the power of Portal for ArcGIS and Mobile capabilities by integrating more real-time services and smart analysis.

Unmanned Vehicle Systems (UVS/drones) have been around for years. They are used for different purposes and can be of help in numerous occasions. However, these devices have become more popular in recent times, and their applications increased rapidly in various fields. Because of this, it is essential for countries to have regulations which set the rules for how these systems can operate. Most UVS (drones) need certain amount of wireless communications in order to operate. The presentation aims to clarify the requirements for frequency spectrum and the countries experiences for allocating spectrum bands for various types of UVS. The presentation will also explain the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) role in regulating UVS. The presentation will identify how UVS can be regulated in the Sultanate from telecom regulatory perspective.