Energy Sustainability in Marine Robotics

About this Research Topic

Background

Over 70% of the earth is covered by ocean, and the marine environment has a significant impact on the future existence of all human beings. Nowadays, the development of robotic technologies for marine applications is a rapidly growing field within applied and fundamental research. A limited power budget restricts marine robots from performing a variety of tasks in the complicated ocean environment, especially tasks that involve long-range, long-duration sailing.

Energy sustainability in marine robotics has emerged as a prominent research field in response to these requirements. With recent advances in supporting technologies for utilizing renewable energy; solar-powered, wind-driven, thermal-powered and wave-propelled marine platforms have become a reality, such as the Waveglider, SeaSlug, Slocum, and ASAROME. Energy-efficient, high endurance, and long-range marine robots can be an effective solution in many situations which encourages scientists and commercial establishments to pay great interest to this research area.

Marine robotics is related to diverse issues ranging from marine manipulation, intelligent transport and autonomous docking to applications in surveillance and adaptive sampling, etc. Due to the requirement of executing tasks in dynamic ocean environments, greater challenges have been encountered for Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) and their applications than ever before. Staying-alive autonomy in marine robotics has rarely been investigated. Energy sustainability is a solution to long-endurance and long-range tasks.

To ensure persistent performance, supporting technologies such as hybrid energy systems, energy-saving mechatronic systems, sustainable energy harvesting, optimal management of energy consumption, uninterrupted power supplies, and recharging, applied to marine platforms or robotics should be thoroughly investigated to conquer the extremely dynamic ocean environment. Hereby, this Research Topic aims to encourage scientists and engineers to focus on developing solid technologies or provide novel ideas to extend the life cycle of marine robots.

This Research Topic aims to offer a broad view of recent developments in energy sustainability in marine robotics, arising from novel contributions to Frontiers in Robotics and AI. We welcome submissions on subjects including, but not limited to, the following:

• Energy-efficient and long-duration ocean-going platforms (robotic sailboats, wave gliders, solar USVs and thermal driven underwater gliders, etc.)
• Configurations and management of hybrid renewable energy for marine robots
• High-efficient energy-saving strategies for marine robotics
• Energy-efficient path planning algorithms based on spatiotemporal ocean currents and wave forecasts
• Power consumption modeling and optimization of marine robots to extend workspace
• Machine learning, deep learning and/or reinforcement learning-based power consumption optimization of marine robots
• Uninterrupted power supplies and recharging for marine robotics
• Energy-saving mechatronic systems applied in marine robotics

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Prof. Lam acts as a consultant for NXROBO, a company that specializes in providing solutions for robotics education. All other Topic Editors declare no competing interests with regards to the Research Topic subject.

Keywords: Marine Robotics, Energy Optimization, Renewable Energy, Unmanned Surface Vehicle, Underwater Robot

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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