The Scottish Marine Robotics Facility: Use of unmanned vehicles for environmental measurement, monitoring and decision making

Advances in marine technology are essential to allow us to study the marine environment on which life on our planet depends. The Scottish Association for Marine Science is the world’s largest independent marine research organisation with a long history in marine technology development. In 2015, the institute announced the opening of its new marine robotics facility. The facility pools together a broad range of technology’s spanning deep sea, coastal, surface and aerial platforms. The facility specialises in the integration of new and novel technologies into fundamental marine research to improve measurement, monitoring and decision making. Each case study presented in this paper highlights the importance of autonomous systems within marine research the diversity of applications being developed within the robotics facility, and the significance of science communities working in conjunction with technology developers to test, evaluate and support autonomous system development.