RAMI23: An Inspection & Maintenance Robotics Challenge to form the New Generation of Marine Scientists and Engineers

We describe the Robotics for Asset Maintenance and Inspection (RAMI), a competition focused on Inspection and Maintenance (I&M) tasks for aerial and underwater robots. RAMI is one of the four challenge-led robotic competitions organ-ised in the framework of the Metrological Evaluation and Testing of Robots in International CompetitionS (METRICS) European project, and is focused on the Inspection and Maintenance (I&M) domain. In this work, we describe the RAMI23 competition dedicated to autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV s). It was organised by the NATO STO Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE) at La Spezia, Italy, in its protected seawater basin, from 16 to 21 July 2023. RAMI23 proposed AUVs missions set in an Oil&Gas mock-up scenario, characterised by realistic conditions. Advanced perception and autonomy were required to succeed in the proposed tasks. These feautures are highly required in real-world I&M missions to increase the mission performance, especially considering the typical difficult communication conditions, which make a direct link between operator and robot unreliable. RAMI's overall objective is to form new generations of re-searchers in the development of smarter robotic solutions for the vibrant Oil&Gas sector, and to expand the scoring method used in the European Robotics League (ERL) events to a metrological evaluation, in order to enable robotic system's benchmarking through competitions. Teams' result were encouraging, demonstrating an improvement in real-time perception and autonomy with respect to the 2022 edition. RAMI23 was more than a competition. It was an event gathering the marine robotics community. We will continue working on this, by strengthening the community, with the objective of attracting and supporting more and more teams' participation.