The main objective of this article collection consists in gathering together the Control engineering and science and Marine Robotics communities, allowing a productive exchange among people with different backgrounds. This Research Topic is based on outputs from the workshop
'Hand-Shaking Advanced Control in Marine Robotics Applications' at IROS 2018. However, we would also welcome spontaneous submissions not associated with this workshop, assuming they fit the scope of the Research Topic. In particular, the aim is to let experts in advanced automatic control techniques and theory, more specifically focused on theoretical developments in the field, to present the recent advancements and new trends within their community; at the same time, experts in marine robotics can present their current work and achievements, highlighting the currently unsolved problems and challenges in the advanced guidance navigation and control of the single marine platforms, as well as the challenges concerning the control of teams of heterogeneous robots.
The article collection aims to foster the exchange of different perspectives and the birth of new ideas and research lines. We hope to facilitate the exchange of different perspectives and the birth of new ideas and possible advancements in the fields. We are convinced that, by putting in touch the Marine Robotics and the Automatic Control communities, research in the two fields could strongly benefit from productive discussion and joint work of the two communities and that experts and students of both communities could learn a lot from each other. Collaboration among different actors in the two communities (researchers, industrials, end-users…) has also the aim to speed up the technological transfer from science and research to industry, thus allowing effective and fast advancements of robotics in civilian everyday life applications. Moreover, participation of students and young researchers will help to understand the importance of the joined fields and to shape the new generations of scientists.
Objectives stated above will be pursued by addressing various currently relevant topics. Marine Robotics experts will deal with current challenges in their field and requirements for advanced guidance navigation and control systems of marine platforms. More specifically, faced topics will range from robots for deep ocean exploration, persistent systems, biomimetics applied to marine applications, safety and effectiveness of marine platforms for the interaction with humans (e.g. divers) and from single to multi-vehicle systems, from fully to partially sensorized vehicles and relative challenges for their control systems.
Automatic Control experts will face topics among which: control system problems in the interaction with humans and environment, advanced control of systems with uncertain dynamics working within uncertain environments, embodiment and morphological computation, and the need of “orchestration control” for robots exploiting their morphology and physical dynamics, classical control with prioritized tasks for manipulation and intervention, as well as arm/vehicle motion coordination, self-organization of behaviours in soft robots.
Topics:
• Advanced control methodologies
• Robot exploitation for (deep) ocean exploration
• Embodiment and morphological computation, and the need of “orchestration control”
• Biomimetics in marine robotics applications
• Control system problems in the interaction with humans and environment
• Self-organization of behaviours in soft robots
• Persistent Autonomy through Learning and Adaptation
• Multi-robot system control
• Future trends in marine robotics
