Podcast on AI and Underwater Applications
The protection of maritime infrastructure such as harbours, submarine cables, offshore wind farms, and pipelines has become much more relevant since the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. Events such as the underwater detonation of the Nord Stream pipelines at the end of September 2022 show how vulnerable our infrastructure is and what impact acts of sabotage can have.
Real-time situational awareness is essential to protect the facilities. Conventional SONAR systems are used for this, but they are currently still mostly large, inflexible and expensive. This is now set to change, which is why Kiel University in cooperation with companies received funding totalling 1.6 million euros in September last year to advance research into a new type of SONAR technology with AI-supported signal processing.
In a podcast called ‘Chatbots and AI’, the CEO of the company assono, Thomas Bahn, talked to Gerhard Schmidt about how conventional sonar systems work and how they can be improved with the help of thin-film sensors and reinforcement learning. Details of the podcast and the audio part of it can be found here.
In March 2026, the DSS Chair attended the annual DAGA conference in Dresden. Thanks to the support of the GaS-Club, the student Aylin Kösker was given the opportunity to accompany the chair and participate in the conference from March 23rd to March 26th. As part of the daily poster sessions, she presented the results of her bachelor’s thesis “Machine Learning for the Analysis of Hydrographic Data to Assess the Waterside Accessibility of Port Waters” in the field of Underwater Acoustics. The thesis forms an important basis for an ongoing university research project on the acoustic analysis of sediment properties in harbor areas. The poster session enabled valuable discussions with researchers and conference participants from related research fields.