Marine robotics requires high quality simulators due to complexity and availability of trials at sea. While there are several simulators in the literature, these have gaps in applications requiring high visual fidelity and human-robot interaction. This paper describes Marine Robotics Unity Simulator (MARUS), an open-source simulator for marine robotics based on Unity3D software that aims to close those gaps. It can simulate multi-robot systems in a marine environment offering water physics and a wide array of sensors commonly used in underwater and maritime domain. An interface allowing inter-connectivity with the simulator was developed where the focus was put on ROS 1/2 integration preferred in robotics community. Due to growing requirements on high-fidelity visual simulation required for machine learning, tools were developed for enabling dataset generation with automatic annotations. Examples of simulator application demonstrate the capabilities of the simulator for real world problems encountered during research project development.

Despite the popularity of the buddy system, where a pair of divers look out for each other, scuba diving still poses significant risks with 15–30 deaths per 100 000 divers per year. In the 2015 edition of “ Diving Medicine for Scuba Divers ,” it is reported that 86% of diving fatalities involve a lone diver, yet divers still elect to dive alone for a variety of reasons including buddy unavailability. A solution to this may lie in a dedicated autonomous dive-buddy robot, which could also operate as an assistant. The challenge is how would the diver interact and communicate with the robot in underwater conditions often involving low visibility. In this article, we detail and demonstrate a technological solution that involves the direct motion capture of fingers and hand using a smart dive glove with integrated stretch sensors alongside an inertial measurement unit. The hardware and gesture recognition protocol were initially evaluated in a lab-based study where 10 users participated in a virtual reality environment setup and interacted with a virtual robot using gestures. In total, 140 out of 175 gestures were correctly recognized, resulting in diver-robot commands. A full sea demonstration of the underwater motion-capture system followed with the underwater dive glove used to send gesture-based acoustic commands to a dedicated dive buddy, a modified autonomous underwater vehicle. The diver was able to command the robot to move in six directions with a total delay of 6 s or less between the beginning of the gesture and the initiation of the action by the robot.

Diver‐robot interaction is an exciting and recent field of study. There are different ways a diver and robot can interact, such as using tablets or detecting divers with cameras or sonars. A novel approach presented in this paper uses direct diver‐robot communication. To facilitate communication for humans, we use typical diver gestures, which are transmitted to a robot using a wearable glove and acoustic communications. Following previous work by the University of Zagreb and the University of Auckland, a collaboration to control an autonomous underwater vehicle based on a wearable diver glove has been made possible through the EU Marine Robots project. Under this project, Trans-National Access trials allow Laboratory for Underwater Systems and Technologies, University of Zagreb, to offer its robots and infrastructure to external partners. Initial trials with the University of Auckland, which were planned to take place on site, were transformed into remote access trials. This paper reports on these challenging trials and collaboration given the distance and time zone difference. The key point is to demonstrate the possibility of having a diver remotely controlling a robot using typical gestures recognized by a wearable glove and transmitted via acoustic modems (and the Internet for the remote connection).

Marine robotics is a complex field with a potentially high demanding logistics and high deployment cost. This is a barrier to many research groups. On the other hand, some research groups have substantial equipment and infrastructure that are typically underutilized. The push for sharing infrastructures was recently accentuated due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, remote access experiments became the norm during the lockdown periods. LABUST completed new infrastructure during the COVID-19 pandemic and prepared it for state-of-the-art remote access from anywhere in the globe. This is important both for research and educational purposes. This article describes the infrastructure, equipment, and methods used for implementing the remote access including the calibration procedures. It also reports on real remote access trials for different applications such as Autonomous ships, diver–robot interaction, and Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) pilots. These examples include both pool and at-sea remote trials, proving the capabilities of the infrastructure.