MarEH4EU

Maritime Exploration Hall for Europe

The Maritime Exploration Hall (MarEH) of DFKI RIC serves to test new robotic technologies on and under water. Everyday and special missions are simulated, maneuvers are carried out and future systems are demonstrated. With it’s dimensions and current technical infrastructure, the Maritime Exploration Hall is already unique in Europe. However, physical on-site tests are pretty labour-intensive for non-local researchers due to transport of equipment and travel of personnel. As part of the RAWFIE federation of robot testbeds, the MarEH will be made available to the robotics community (both academic and industrial) without the need of physical attendance. Therefore a tracking and control system for standard platform surface vehicles will be installed which allows remote experimenters to start and observe experiments and intervene if necessary.

Duration: 01.09.2016 till 31.12.2018
Donee: German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence GmbH
Application Field: Underwater Robotics

Project details

The main objective of the MarEH4EU project is to open the unique DFKI Maritime Exploration Hall (MarEH) in Bremen, Germany, to all interested researchers and firms in Europe and beyond. Specifically, the project has the following objectives:
  1. To add with the DFKI RIC Maritime Exploration Hall a new Indoor Maritime Testbed for experimentation with Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) to the RAWFIE federation of facilities.
  2. To make the MarEH fit for remote experiments by installing cameras, motion tracking equipment, and other sensors needed for full control and monitoring of experiments with unmanned surface vehicles.
  3. To provide the necessary internet-based broad-band command uplink and data streaming services to allow the remote control and supervision of experiments in the MarEH through researchers located in remote locations.
  4. To provide technical and scientific staff to interact (if necessary) with the experimenters and for on-site support.
  5. To set-up and maintain a small fleet of USVs provided by the RAWFIE consortium for the purpose of remote-controlled experiments in the Maritime Exploration Hall.

To meet the objectives described above and the requirements issued by the RAWFIE project, the MarEH4EU project will
  • adapt the DFKI MarEH technically to make it able to interface with the RAWFIE Platform (and throught the RAWFIE Platform with the external experimenters),
  • augment the existing sensor infrastructure with additional static sensors and motion tracking equipment,
  • integrate up to five USVs provided by RAWFIE into the new sensor- and communication infrastructure,
  • open the MarEH to external experiments that can be booked through the RAWFIE Platform.

Full support including on-site staff to monitor and support the experiments, on-site data storage and full remote access to the site through experimenters will be provided for up to 25 experimentation days in this project. Additional experimentation days will have to be supported by the experimenters.



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