Marine Robots for the Energy Transition
The offshore energy sector faces enormous challenges in maintaining and inspecting underwater infrastructure in hostile ocean environments. Autonomous marine robots offer a transformative solution, but achieving true autonomy in unstructured underwater settings remains an open research problem. In this talk, I will present our work at the Ocean Systems Laboratory at Heriot-Watt University and the National Robotarium on developing intelligent marine robots capable of operating in these demanding conditions. I will cover our research on reinforcement learning for underwater vehicle control, multi-agent coordination for cooperative inspection tasks, and perception systems for sonar and optical-based mapping.