Reconfigurable AUV for intervention missions: a case study on underwater object recovery

Abstract

Starting in January 2009, the RAUVI (Reconfigurable Autonomous Underwater Vehicle for Intervention Missions) project is a three years coordinated research action funded by the Spanish Ministry of Research and Innovation. In this paper, the state of progress after two years of continuous research is reported. As a first experimental validation of the complete system, a Search & Recovery problem is addressed, consisting of finding and recovering a flight data recorder placed at an unknown position at the bottom of a water tank. An overview of the techniques used to successfully solve the problem in an autonomous way is provided. The obtained results are very promising and are the first step toward the final test in shallow water at the end of 2011.

Grasping for the Seabed: Developing a New Underwater Robot Arm for Shallow-Water Intervention

“…Detailed results of these experiments are provided in [18]. Concerning arm control, successfully attaching a hook in different attempts demonstrates the accuracy of the arm and its autonomous control, especially accounting for the fact that the vehicle is floating during the task and, thus, under some motion.…”

Intervention AUVs: The next challenge

“…The major outcome of RAUVI was the implementation of the GIRONA 500 I-AUV ) which was (Fernandez et al (2013)). The AUV was also equipped with a stereo pair and was used to demonstrate autonomous object recovery in a water tank environment (Prats et al (2012c)). To the best of author's knowledge, after ALIVE and SAUVIM, RAUVI is the 3rd project which demonstrated experimentally autonomous intervention capabilities, being the lightest one (less than 200 Kg).…”

“…14 b). First, a method that uses the histogram of hue and saturation in the HSV color space reported in (Prats et al (2012c)), has been adapted to detect three red marks on the valve. Once the stereo correspondence of the marks is established, they are fitted to the 3D model of the valve using an optimal rigid transformation.…”

Visibility in underwater robotics: Benchmarking and single image dehazing

“…The main goal of the project was to develop the AUV technology necessary for autonomously perform intervention missions in underwater environments. The case of study proposed is the recovery of an object in the seabed as described in [Prats et al, 2012c].…”

“…The group has been doing research in underwater robotics since 2009 with the RAUVI project, although the members of the group have been working in robotic manipulation for a long time as part of the robotic intelligence laboratory (RobInLab). The group expertise focuses on underwater robotic manipulation as in [Prats et al, 2012c] or [Peñalver et al, 2015] using the 4 degrees of freedom lightweight ARM5E described in [Fernández et al, 2013]. …”