To accelearate the pace of our developments, and to increase the chances of success during testing, our partners from TUM are working on creating digital twins of the test sites. This is especially relevant in the context of the ongoing CoVID-19 pandemic, which makes travelling difficult which lowers the opportunities for actual testing. In collaboration with HPA, they have created a digital twin for one of our test sites in the Port of Hamburg.

The team at TUM - ITR has developed a prototype of the gripper device for SeaClear. This version is decidedly simple for robust operation under harsh conditions and will provide a baseline for comparing its efficiency to upgrades with suction capabilities and other advanced features. In this video a KUKA iiwa robot is used to simulate the motion of the underwater vehicle the skid and gripper will be attached to. The versatility and robustness of the gripper design is shown by collecting various objects of different shapes and material, from stiff but deformed cans to flexible nets or piles of objects.

A few days ago, SeaClear was featured on the frontpage of homePort, "...a maritime real laboratory and makerspace for the port of the future ...". Claudia Hertel-ten Eikelder, project responsible of partner HPA (Hamburg Port Authority), answered questions regarding the objectives and methods of the project, together with our current progress and future steps. You can read the whole interview on the homePort website, together with a project page outlining the most important information about SeaClear

Today, as part of World Water Day, we are publishing the official animation of the project! This explains in a graphical way the objectives of SeaClear and how we are planning to achieve them. You can appreciate the way the robots are expected to interact with each other and their individual role in the system, together with the importance and the impact of our proposed solution.