Automated environmental monitoring in marine environments is carried out by small-scale robotic systems comprising one or a few robots or static sensor networks. This itself is nothing new, but new advances in the nature and use of these robots has drawn the attention of oil and gas majors across the sector. During the 2010s, distributed robotics was intensively researched, employing multiple rather than single robots. The scope of the field has expanded substantially, with a much broader range of issues being examined. The use of multi-robot systems can benefit a variety of new robotics applications, including ... (full story)