Validation of Space Robotics in Underwater Environments via Disturbance Robustness Equivalency

Field robotics research in maritime and space domains is constrained by a persistent gap between low-cost, low-fidelity simulation and costly offshore experimentation. Instrumented water tanks partially bridge this gap but often provide limited sensing, restricted experimental capabilities, and weak integration with simulation tools. To address these limitations, we present Marinarium, a modular, standalone experimental facility that provides a cost-effective intermediate testbed between simulation and field deployment. Marinarium combines a fully instrumented underwater and aerial operational volume with motion capture (MoCap), a retractable roof enabling both sheltered and open-air operation, a digital twin implemented in SMaRCSim, and direct integration with a planar space robotics laboratory, enabling both maritime and underwater space-analog experimentation. We present the design rationale of the facility and validate its capabilities through four representative studies in field robotics: (i) data-driven system identification of underwater vehicle dynamics; (ii) heterogeneous multi-domain robotic rendezvous; (iii) sim-to-real transfer for underwater robotics using learned dynamics residuals; and (iv) cross-domain validation of spacecraft autonomy using underwater surrogates. Together, these studies demonstrate that Marinarium enables reproducible, instrumented experimentation across multiple field robotics challenges that would otherwise require costly offshore deployments or be impractical to investigate using simulation alone.

On-orbit servicing represents a critical frontier in future aerospace engineering, with the manipulation of dynamic non-cooperative targets serving as a key technology. In microgravity environments, objects are typically free-floating, lacking the support and frictional constraints found on Earth, which significantly escalates the complexity of tasks involving space robotic manipulation. Conventional planning and control-based methods are primarily limited to known, static scenarios and lack real-time responsiveness. To achieve precise robotic manipulation of dynamic targets in unknown and unstructured space environments, this letter proposes a data-driven space robotic manipulation approach that integrates historical temporal information and inter-frame correlation mechanisms. By exploiting the temporal correlation between historical and current frames, the system can effectively capture motion features within the scene, thereby producing stable and smooth manipulation trajectories for dynamic targets. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed method, we developed a ground-based experimental platform consisting of a PIPER X robotic arm and a dual-axis linear stage, which accurately simulates micro-gravity free-floating motion in a 2D plane.

Space robots must interpret tasks and act despite unfamiliar dynamics, difficult sensing conditions, and limited opportunities for human intervention. Foundation models offer reusable perceptual and behavioral knowledge, but their value depends on how that knowledge reaches physical execution. This critical review follows space-specific requirements through perception, prediction, planning, and action to deployment and validation, emphasizing orbital manipulation and proximity operations. Terrestrial comparisons establish benefits of particular pretraining stages and model interfaces; their transfer to space dynamics and constrained onboard operation remains insufficiently tested. Event cameras offer timely motion observations across strong illumination contrasts, while spiking neural networks provide possible routes to sparse local computation. We examine how sensor degradation, state estimation and computing choices affect feedback and recovery. Higher action throughput need not yield fresher feedback; lower processor power can also coexist with higher energy per inference. We organize validation as an iterative sim-to-ground-to-space pathway, connecting physical tests with telemetry-based diagnosis and closed-loop revalidation. A satellite-capture example links observations to approach, contact and recovery, while a corresponding protocol separates generalization from adaptation with limited target-domain interaction. These comparisons identify what models already contribute and the physical evidence needed to support autonomous space operation.