Search papers, labs, and topics across Lattice.
The paper introduces the Marinarium, a modular underwater research facility designed to bridge the gap between simulation, lab validation, and field conditions for maritime and space-analog robotics. It features a fully instrumented underwater and aerial operational volume, a retractable roof for real-weather conditions, a digital twin in SMaRCSim, and integration with a space robotics laboratory. The paper demonstrates the Marinarium's capabilities through experiments in system identification for underwater vehicles, heterogeneous robot rendezvous, digital twin validation, and spacecraft navigation using underwater surrogates.
A new modular underwater research facility, the Marinarium, offers a resource-efficient way to conduct realistic maritime and space-analog robotic experiments, bridging the gap between simulation and real-world conditions.
This paper presents the Marinarium, a modular and stand-alone underwater research facility designed to provide a realistic testbed for maritime and space-analog robotic experimentation in a resource-efficient manner. The Marinarium combines a fully instrumented underwater and aerial operational volume, extendable via a retractable roof for real-weather conditions, a digital twin in the SMaRCSim simulator and tight integration with a space robotics laboratory. All of these result from design choices aimed at bridging simulation, laboratory validation, and field conditions. We compare the Marinarium to similar existing infrastructures and illustrate how its design enables a set of experiments in four open research areas within field robotics. First, we exploit high-fidelity dynamics data from the tank to demonstrate the potential of learning-based system identification approaches applied to underwater vehicles. We further highlight the versatility of the multi-domain operating volume via a rendezvous mission with a heterogeneous fleet of robots across underwater, surface, and air. We then illustrate how the presented digital twin can be utilized to reduce the reality gap in underwater simulation. Finally, we demonstrate the potential of underwater surrogates for spacecraft navigation validation by executing spatiotemporally identical inspection tasks on a planar space-robot emulator and a neutrally buoyant \gls{rov}. In this work, by sharing the insights obtained and rationale behind the design and construction of the Marinarium, we hope to provide the field robotics research community with a blueprint for bridging the gap between controlled and real offshore and space robotics experimentation.
