Abstract
Nowadays, research in autonomous underwater manipulation has demonstrated simple applications like picking an object from the sea floor, turning a valve or plugging and unplugging a connector. These are fairly simple tasks compared with those already demonstrated by the mobile robotics community, which include, among others, safe arm motion within areas populated with a priori unknown obstacles or the recognition and location of objects based on their 3D model to grasp them. Kinect-like 3D sensors have contributed significantly to the advance of mobile manipulation providing 3D sensing capabilities in real-time at low cost. Unfortunately, the underwater robotics community is lacking a 3D sensor with similar capabilities to provide rich 3D information of the work space. In this paper, we present a new underwater 3D laser scanner and demonstrate its capabilities for underwater manipulation. In order to use this sensor in conjunction with manipulators, a calibration method to find the relative position between the manipulator and the 3D laser scanner is presented. Then, two different advanced underwater manipulation tasks beyond the state of the art are demonstrated using two different manipulation systems. First, an eight Degrees of Freedom (DoF) fixed-base manipulator system is used to demonstrate arm motion within a work space populated with a priori unknown fixed obstacles. Next, an eight DoF free floating Underwater Vehicle-Manipulator System (UVMS) is used to autonomously grasp an object from the bottom of a water tank.
Highlights
Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) are mostly used for survey missions
This paper presents a new real-time 3D laser scanner designed to improve the capabilities of the Underwater Vehicle-Manipulator Systems (UVMSs)
This paper has presented an underwater 3D laser scanner and its application to advanced underwater manipulation tasks using two different manipulation systems
Summary
A large number of potential applications require intervention going beyond their current capabilities (e.g., the maintenance of permanent observatories, submerged oil wells, the search and recovery of black-boxes, etc.). Such applications are currently tackled using work-class Remotely Operated underwater Vehicles (ROVs) with a significant cost dominated by the cost of the ship. Advancing towards Intervention Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (IAUVs) may reduce drastically the cost of these operations. With the appearance of the Kinect, 3D sensing has drastically reduced in cost, becoming a very popular sensor for mobile manipulation It does not work properly underwater, and a clear alternative does not exist yet.
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