In the context of a digital world saturated with images and videos, QualitEye stands out as an innovative project aiming to push the boundaries of visual quality assessment. This ambitious initiative aims to create a European doctoral network dedicated to this crucial challenge. With a consortium of renowned partners, QualitEye is committed to training a new generation of highly qualified interdisciplinary researchers capable of tackling the complex challenges related to the evaluation of visual content quality. This European doctoral network will provide a unique platform for yearly stage researchers, fostering international and intersectoral exchanges. By collaborating with experts from various countries and sectors, QualitEye's doctoral students will benefit from a wealth of approaches and expertise, enriching their research records. International mobility and secondments in industrial environments will be encouraged, allowing doctoral students to explore other partner institutions or companies across Europe. In a world where visual content is ubiquitous, the applications of QualitEye are vast and varied. The project aims to stimulate innovation in areas such as healthcare, education, entertainment, and virtual reality. By developing advanced methodologies to quantify and master the quality of visual content, QualitEye seeks to enhance user experiences, offer new learning and entertainment methods, and open new perspectives in key areas such as healthcare, culture, and education. On the technical side, QualitEye will focus on creating precise models and metrics, implementing sophisticated perceptual models, and exploring deep learning for finer evaluation. All of this is aimed at ensuring quality throughout the lifecycle of visual content while mastering energy efficiency. By also integrating industrial partners, the project is committed to addressing the needs and challenges of the professional world. Doctoral students will have the opportunity to work on concrete projects in collaboration with companies, thus facilitating the transfer of knowledge between the academic and industrial worlds.

UNDINA intends to improve connected underwater robotic technology by increasing the reliability of communication, networking, and positioning systems using deep integrations, mathematical modeling, and algorithmic methods. The partners will develop novel cognitive communication algorithms, and network-aided positioning methods by using modems that can seamlessly operate over tri-modes, i.e., through optics, acoustics, and magnetic induction, to ensure operational connectivity at a wide range of distances and environmental conditions. To accomplish the project goals, reinforcement learning methods, validated numerical opto-acoustic-inductive channel models, Evologics Intelligent Networking Software (EvINS) Framework, and robot behavior frameworks will be used. Project outputs also include robot-agnostic communication and positioning solutions that enable reliable remote control and coordinated, cooperative, cost-efficient data transfer in complex marine environments. The UNDINA project will develop technologies for underwater wireless sensors networks that exhibit better scalability, maintainability, and environmental impact than current cabled and wireless underwater networks.

A number of different tasks are nowadays already successfully performed with unmanned robotic platforms. Operations like ocean monitoring and exploration, bathymetric tasks or even inspection of underwater structures, are all good examples of tasks that be performed in an efficient and cost-effective way by AUVs. While the versatility of such platforms brings added benefits, its long term use is still very limited by the energetic autonomy of the vehicles. Therefore, deployment and recovery operations of the vehicle are always necessary, requiring non-negligible amounts of both time and personnel, but also of a support vessel. This leads to a significant impact in the operations costs. Enabling long-term unattended operations, without the need of a support vessel, would dramatically decrease the cost of operating such vehicles, making them more affordable. Persistent and/or long-term deployment of AUVs, for exploration and monitoring tasks, has been foreseen as a future development, The main drive for this project arises from concrete and specific needs for long term monitoring of fish-farm infrastructures. In specific, the the use of an AUV for those purposes would, on one side, allow the study of wild fish aggregations in such structures, and on the other allow a more continuous monitoring of the benthos under the fish farms. The development of a new era of technologies that enable the aforementioned tasks are the core of this project, in particular for both contactless underwater power transmission and wireless communications. On top of that, the development of the navigation and control strategies that enable the vehicle to perform its inspection and monitoring activities will complement the key technological challenges of the project.