Leveraging the RoboMaker Service on AWS Cloud Platform for Marine Drone Digital Twin Construction

Drones and other robotic technologies enable us to explore and study the world without the need for human guidance. This enables us to interact with previously uncharted areas that pose a risk to human safety, including the underwater biosphere. A drone may encounter a variety of problems when operating in such an unpredictable and hazardous environment. In these contexts, creating a digital twin of a marine drone can provide several advantages, such as for example to enhance the management, maintenance, and performance of the marine drone through data-driven approaches, benefiting efficiency and safety. In this work, we present the development of a digital twin prototype, which is a virtual representation of a physical entity of a marine drone-type unmanned surface vehicle. ROS, Blender, and the AWS cloud platform were used to create the system. The three-dimensional model of the maritime drone was created in Blender, and the AWS Robomaker service was utilized for simulation testing and possible deployment of the robotic application without managing any infrastructure. The goal is to present the tools and architecture that were developed to collect data using non-invasive ways and generate a marine digital twin.