The new C++ standard, C++11, and its upgrade, C++14, introduce new advances and features which make more affordable and easier the development of software for complex systems. Following this tenet we have designed and developed a component-based service-oriented C++ middleware, called ISE, for distributed systems using exclusively standard C++ and the quasi standard C++ Boost Libraries for keeping the middleware portable. The final aim of developing ISE has been to build the remote communication software infrastructure of an oceanic autonomous robotic sailboat called A-Tirma.

Autonomous sailboats are silent surface vehicles which are well suited for acoustic monitoring. The integration of an acoustic receiver in an unmanned surface vehicle has a large potential for population monitoring as it permits to report geo-referenced detections in real time, so that researchers can adapt monitoring strategies as data arrive. In this paper we present preliminary work, done on the framework of ACUSQUAT project, to explore the usage of an acoustic receiver onboard a small (2m length-over-all) autonomous sailboat in order to detect the presence of tagged adult exemplars of angelshark (Squatina squatina), the target species in ACUSQUAT, in certain areas which have demonstrated that this approach is feasible. Results obtained in simulation and during field trials are presented.

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The segmentation of three-dimensional vascular trees is an important topic in medical image processing. Although it may seem to be an easy task, many different techniques have been proposed in the literature during the last decade and many difficulties remain. One can wonder why the human eye is usually able to understand the connectivity and the topology of the different structures while most algorithms fail to do so. In this paper, we propose an original approach that classifies the different contours by applying a geodesic distance transform on the contours of the vessels, where the evolution speed depends directly on the maximal curvature of the contours. This proposition comes from the observation that the maximal curvature on a standard vessel is usually positive and almost constant while it approaches zero or becomes negative on the contour at the contact with other structures. We describe our method in details and present promising results on synthetic and real images, where the method has been able to detect complex vascular structures without leaking into bones or mixing different vascular networks.