Ambjørn Waldum

Ambjørn Grimsrud Waldum is a PhD candidate at the Department of Marine Technology, NTNU. His research focuses on perception systems in applied underwater robotics, including computer vision, sensor fusion, SLAM, and simulation-to-deployment workflows. He has contributed to projects enabling robust autonomous docking for resident underwater vehicles, particularly in dynamic subsea environments. His work emphasizes tight integration between simulation and real-world platforms, allowing accelerated development and reproducible testing. In his IEEE UT 2025 paper, “From Virtual Waters to Real Oceans”, he and colleagues demonstrate how simulation-informed architectures close the gap between virtual testing and real-world deployment of ROVs. He has also worked on real-time visual navigation, sonar object detection using synthetic data, and field validation of vision-based docking in the Trondheim fjord.