Marinarium: a New Arena to Bring Maritime Robotics Closer to Shore

Abstract

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.

Figures (13)

• Figure 1: From left to right: i) aerial view of the Marinarium facility, ii) the facility digital twin in the SMaRCSim, iii) multi-domain operational volume inside and iv) equivalent inspection tasks executed by a BlueROV2 in the tank and a simulated CubeSat in Basilisk kenneally2020basilisk.
• Figure 2: Plans and CAD model of the Marinarium with the dome closed. The structure is built combining pre-fabricated modules, a floating terrace at water surface level and a retractable roof, to form a stand-alone facility. The [9$\times$5$\times$3]m water basin volume has been depicted in blue for visualization purposes.
• Figure 3: Partial aerial view of the Marinarium water basin. 3 tones of sea gravel of [8-16]mm radius have been laid on the floor to reduce acoustic multipath and enable the operation of low-frequency acoustic equipment.
• Figure 4: The free-flyer roque2025towards, the BlueRobotics BlueROV2 Heavy, and their identical autonomy stack. Ground truth state estimation is obtained from a Qualisys system and transferred to either an on-board Nvidia Jetson or an off-board PC via 2. High-level computing and decision-making is performed in 2 after which high-level control signals are sent to an onboard PixHawk microcontroller which allocates the control to the individual actuators.
• Figure 5: The BlueROV2 Heavy in the Marinarium during the data collection for sysID (top). The vehicle state $\boldsymbol{x}_k$ is provided by the Qualisys motion capture system (bottom).