Remote presence: Powerful tool for promotion, education and research in Marine Robotics

Over last ten years Mobile & Marine Robotics Research Centre (MMRRC), University of Limerick, Ireland have developed OceanRINGS - a suite of smart technologies for subsea operations, designed to be integrated with any ROV - ship combination. It includes advanced control solutions for full range of ROVS - from mini ROVs used for remote monitoring & inspection to full-size work-class ROVs. Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) LATIS is a prototype platform developed at MMRRC to test and validate OceanRINGS. System validation and technology demonstration was performed over last five years through a series of test trials with different support vessels off the north, south and west coast of Ireland, in Donegal, Bantry Bay, Cork Harbour, Galway Bay, Shannon Estuary and La Spezia, Italy. The MMRRC team has developed Virtual Control Cabin concept, which provide a framework to control offshore robotic platforms from remote location in real time. Part of the overall system is demonstration platform to develop, test and validate control algorithms from remote locations using hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) real-time simulator running at UL lab. This paper provides more information about demonstration platform and discusses possible applications.