Cross-domain marine robotics
Marinarium enables research across several fronts:
| Focus Area | Description |
|---|---|
| Human–Robot Interaction Underwater | The SHARCEX project explores diver–AUV collaboration to reduce risk and extend human capability underwater. |
| Autonomy and Control | Robust control, path planning, and system identification for AUVs and ROVs operating in complex environments. |
| Sim-to-Real Learning | Bridging synthetic training with physical validation, improving reliability of AI-driven control strategies. |
| Dual-Domain Research (Space & Sea) | Within DISCOWER, underwater neutral buoyancy experiments mirror microgravity studies, advancing both subsea and space robotics. |
| Dual-Domain Research (Subsea & Air) | ALARS project – Aerial-Lift Autonomous Robotic Systems: exploring coordinated autonomy between drones and marine robots. |
| Education & Student Projects | Interdisciplinary prototyping, integration, and testing of robotic systems using the tank’s real-time tracking and data infrastructure. |
Underwater sim2real bridging
Simulators still fall short of capturing real hydrodynamics, so controllers and learning-based policies developed in simulation often break down when deployed on real underwater vehicles. Residual dynamics models offer a practical remedy: they learn the difference between simulated and real vehicle motion and feed it back into the simulator to make it more faithful. Learning them, however, requires accurate real-world motion data paired with the same vehicle running in simulation, something that has rarely been available underwater.
At Marinarium, the underwater motion-capture system and the facility’s digital twin provide exactly this pairing. Robots in the basin are tracked with high accuracy and mirrored in real time in the simulator, giving us the data needed to learn residual models that close the gap between underwater simulation and reality.