Project summary

The four-year Horizon Europe MERLIN project focuses on the demonstration of long-endurance intelligent multi-purpose autonomous vehicles for marine applications. This 8 million € Research and Innovation project comprising 18 partners from across Europe which is coordinated by the University of Birmingham seeks to exploit long-endurance operational capabilities offered through the use of hydrogen fuel cells and renewable energy installed onboard an Unmanned Surface Vessel (USV) and Autonomous Underwater Vessels (AUVs). The USV and AUVs will be capable of navigating and operating autonomously based on AI algorithms without the need for human intervention. A Mission Remote Control Centre (MRCC) will permit data from the autonomous vessels to be transmitted to base. Conversely, the MRCC will allow the transmission of commands from the supervisor to the robotic vehicles. The vehicles will incorporate advanced surface and underwater grasping capability for the collection of samples, handling, installation and recovery of sensors using custom-built robotic arms. The USV will provide geo-tagging reference data to the AUVs when they operate underwater and be able to track them during the mission. The USV will be able to navigate from its base to the location of the mission where the AUVs will be released. At the end of the mission the AUVs will dock again with the USV so they can be safely returned to base. The vehicles will be capable of operating independently as well as in combination with manned support vessels. The demonstration activities include three different high value use cases, including marine habitat monitoring off the coast of Barcelona at the vicinity of the OBSEA observatory, seabed mapping at Kolumbo underwater volcano in the Aegean Sea, and infrastructure inspection at Klaipeda Port.
The project will build further on the achievements of the very successful H2020 ENDURUNS project completed in July 2023.

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