Perception and Navigation for Marine Robotics

Marine robotics operates in environments that routinely break the assumptions behind many perception and navigation pipelines. Visibility can degrade abruptly due to turbidity, sonar returns are highly viewpoint-dependent, GPS is unavailable underwater, and vehicle motion is continuously perturbed by currents. Furthermore, intermittent communication limits remote supervision, and obtaining ground truth is costly or infeasible. Consequently, robust autonomy in the ocean hinges on resilient multimodal sensing, state estimation, and mapping methods that remain stable under uncertainty and long-duration drift.

This workshop brings together researchers to discuss emerging solutions and open challenges spanning sensor fusion, SLAM in low-visibility scenes, and localization in GPS-denied settings. A unique aspect of this workshop compared to past events is its grounding in a concrete, real-world challenge. The program features an invited talk from a marine biologist to share the on-the-ground challenges of coral reef conservation, highlighting exactly where marine robotics can make the biggest societal difference.