Advancing Shared and Multi-Agent Autonomy in Underwater Missions: Integrating Knowledge Graphs and Retrieval-Augmented Generation

Robotic platforms have become essential for marine operations by providing regular and continuous access to offshore assets, such as underwater infrastructure inspection, environmental monitoring, and resource exploration. However, the complex and dynamic nature of underwater environments, characterized by limited visibility, unpredictable currents, and communication constraints, presents significant challenges that demand advanced autonomy while ensuring operator trust and oversight. Central to addressing these challenges are knowledge representation and reasoning techniques, particularly knowledge graphs and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems, that enable robots to efficiently structure, retrieve, and interpret complex environmental data. These capabilities empower robotic agents to reason, adapt, and respond effectively to changing conditions. The primary goal of this work is to demonstrate both multi-agent autonomy and shared autonomy, where multiple robotic agents operate independently while remaining connected to a human supervisor. We show how a RAG-powered large language model, augmented with knowledge graph data and domain taxonomy, enables autonomous multi-agent decision-making and facilitates seamless human-robot interaction, resulting in 100\% mission validation and behavior completeness. Finally, ablation studies reveal that without structured knowledge from the graph and/or taxonomy, the LLM is prone to hallucinations, which can compromise decision quality.

Integrating a Digital Twin Concept in the Zero Emission Sea Transporter (ZEST) Project for Sustainable Maritime Transport using Stonefish Simulator

In response to stringent emission reduction targets imposed by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and the European Green Deal's Fit for 55 legislation package, the maritime industry has shifted its focus towards decarbonization. While significant attention has been placed on vessels exceeding 5,000 gross tons (GT), emissions from coastal and short sea shipping, amounting to approximately 13% of global shipping transportation and 15% within the European Union (EU), have not received adequate consideration. This abstract introduces the Zero Emission Sea Transporter (ZEST) project, designed to address this issue by developing a zero-emissions multi-purpose catamaran for short sea route