Modular, maritime experimental platform for research on multi-domain vehicle systems

• Subject Area: Systems Engineering
• Term: Funded in 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 560751082

The major research instrumentation applied within this proposal represents an experimental platform for research and testing of maritime vehicle systems. Thanks to its equipment and expandability, it provides a highly flexible and defined environment for performing realistic experiments for the development, validation and optimization of key maritime technologies. The focus of the proposed major research instrumentation is on research of automation solutions for maritime multi-domain vehicle systems. This innovative vehicle class consists of an interacting vehicle network that operates simultaneously on, under and above the water surface in order to accomplish a complex mission cooperatively. One possible field of application for such vehicle systems is the inspection of maritime, cross-domain infrastructures, such as offshore wind installations, to detect defects across the entire functional unit. The vehicle network may consist of drones as well as surface and underwater vehicles that exchange data in an integrated network and thus collaborate in order to manage this complex task as a coordinated unit. In addition to the optical inspection of surface and underwater structures, the sampling and removal of marine growth under water are also objectives for these systems. For the laboratory-scale reproduction of such missions, the planned major research instrumentation consists of an octagonal environment with a floor area of 25 square meters and a water column of 3 meters. The desired size is based on the research vehicles and sensor systems available to the applicant and the planned experiments. It is intended to combine and expand the major research instrumentation applied for with existing camera-based surface and underwater localization systems and a gantry crane. Special equipment for the experimental platform includes a lowerable carrier system for the installation of scientific equipment superstructures and marine environment mock-ups. These features allow the experimental conditions to be easily adapted to a wide variety of underwater experiments and make the planned experimental platform unique in the applicant's region. The broad know-how base built up by the applicant in the field of automation of maritime systems, which is reflected in a large number of publications, is based on a wide range of experiments carried out in a wide variety of test facilities. The systematic, effective testing of automation solutions for maritime multi-domain vehicle systems is not possible in any of the environments used so far. Hence, the major research instrumentation applied for here plays a key role for the applicant for answering future research questions in the field of multi-domain vehicle systems.

• DFG Programme: Major Research Instrumentation
• Major Instrumentation: Modulare, maritime Experimentalplattform zur Erforschung von Multi-Domänen-Fahrzeugsystemen
• Instrumentation Group: 2440 Hilfseinrichtungen und spezielle Meßgeräte für Wind- und Wasserkanäle und Anlagen des Wasserbaus
• Applicant Institution: Universität Rostock
• Leader: Professor Dr.-Ing. Torsten Jeinsch