New Working Group Proposal: Maritime Robotics

Maritime Robotics
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Maritime Robotics is a branch of robotics that has to deal with a lot of things that regular robotics doesn’t, such as hydrodynamics, hydrostatics, sonars, acoustic beacons… There are already great solutions for simulation and development of maritime robotics in ROS1/2 and Gazebo/Ignition, as you can see in the list below:

Even though we have these amazing tools available, there are still some gaps to close, such as: vehicle model estimation for example. So I think we could get together developers of these packages, as well as people who work with underwater vehicles to map what we have in open source, what is missing, what we could develop and what can be migrated or merged from different packages. Also, OSRF is making an effort to help simulation in underwater environment with Ignition, so I also think it is cool if we can integrate things that already exist into Ignition, as well as update things from ROS to ROS2.

My proposal is that we create a work group, with monthly meetings or every two weeks, to do exactly what I mentioned in the previous paragraph. Of course everyone will contribute with what they can, developing, reviewing, or even just going to the meeting to suggest something or to give their opinion.

Please share your thoughts! Do you want to do this? Is there an important repo/package that I should have listed here? Should we do something else that I haven’t commented?

Disclaimer: I’m not participating in any of the work groups, I don’t know if there is a specific way to start this, to request to put it in ROS Events calendar… I just wanted to get together with everyone, so we can close the gaps and see what we can do to improve maritime robotics development!

Let’s get together!

So, since many have shown interest in participating, I would like to have a better understanding of how each one of you wants to contribute. Please answer this form.

Also, we need to get together to discusss properly what we shall do. If you are interested, vote which is the best time for you in this poll· Please, use your ROS Discourse username in doodle poll.

The time and for the first meeting has been settled. See you guys on 2022-02-04T14:00:00Z→2022-02-04T15:00:00Z ! :partying_face:

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I’d be strongly interested in that. Also my friends would be too, we are a student team building AUV’s for RoboSub Competition, it would be very nice to have such community.

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I’d be interested in participating as well. Thank you for the proposal

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Great proposal! I will definitely participate!

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Great initiative! It would be nice to deepen the knowledge in this matter, I’ve only worked with UUV Simulator.

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Sounds very interesting.
Looking forward to contribute.

I’m personally interested in extra-terrestrial liquid ocean environments such as Titan, Enceladus etc :slight_smile:

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Wow :astonished:! I didn’t think that there were people already looking for that. Is there some extra-terrestrial liquid ocean simulation environment already??? Or this is something new that you are looking for?

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I’m interested in following such a working group. I work mostly with surface vehicles, but we do have projects where we interact with underwater vehicles so both surface and underwater domains are of interest to me.

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Yeah, my idea is that we don’t split up. That is why it is “maritime” and not underwater robotics. If you look at the links that I sent, there are USV simulations as well :smiley:

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Great idea. I’m definitely interested! One correction, the UW Vehicle Simulated in Ignition: Ignition link should be: MBARI Vehicle Simulated in Ignition: Ignition :wink:

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Thank you for the correction! I just fixed the post! :sweat_smile:

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Great Idea. :grinning: I will participate.

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Hi, very nice initiative. I am interested in such working group. My personal experience has been mostly with USVs but would love to expend it to UUVs as well.

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Thanks for the initiative, @Matosinho !

The ROS 2 TSC defines 2 types of working groups: TSC sponsored working groups require a vote and must be chaired by a TSC member, while community driven working groups have less requirements.

It looks like the working group being proposed here has a broader scope than just ROS 2, so I think it probably makes sense to organize it as a community effort.

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Hi All,

I wanted to some information about the working group process as mentioned by @chapulina. As it stands, we have two flavors of working groups, and the distinction between the two is a bit fuzzy.

The first type of working group is a “community working group,” this type of working group is independently organized by the community. The second type of working group is a “TSC working group,” and it is sponsored by the ROS 2 TSC. The only big distinction between the two is that the TSC working group needs to be chaired by a TSC member, and give regular TSC updates. The TSC community reps @musaup, @brettpac @olivier.michel could bring the working group to the TSC for a vote. You would still need to find someone from a TSC member org to chair the working group. Another possibility is that you start as a community working group and then convert it to a TSC working group.

I wrote this guide to creating a community working group and am happy to help you when you’re ready. Full information on the TSC working group process can be found here.

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Hey Yuri! Great to see this going and gaining traction! Thank you for the initiative!

If you do go down the community WG route, it’d be great at some point to combine discussions of this group and the previous ROS maritime community meetings (e.g. ROS World 2021 Maritime Robotics Birds of a Feather session), which were spontaneous.

Looking forward to the evolution of this effort!

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Great initiative @Matosinho. I would be interested in joining such group!

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It’s a very nice initiative. I’d be interested in participating!

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I’d imagine that this WG should try to deal with both of these as there is large overlap in their domain of operation. I’d also like to add that there is an ongoing MBZIRC which brings VRX surface model into Ignition.

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Sounds great to me. Happy to help support.

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