Autonomous Underwater Intervention

Abstract

There is a growing interest and literature on autonomous underwater intervention systems. The purpose of this paper is to provide a review of the recent literature on control systems for autonomous or semi-autonomous underwater manipulation activities, classifying the results based on the type of task executed and the testing environment (simulation, pool, or sea). Amongst underwater intervention tasks, the grasping of objects lying on the seafloor is one of the most studied topics. Several results are given both in pool and sea environments. The perception of such objects might still need further improvements before the system can be considered robust enough. Manipulation of valves while docked has been demonstrated in sea environments. Results on floating valve manipulation or floating inspection through force regulation are still limited to pool environments. Finally, cooperative transportation by multiple agents is still limited to numerical simulation results only. A review of the state of the art of underwater manipulation is presented. First an introduction is given, recalling the fundamental milestones reached in the past on this topic. Then, recent findings on control systems for (semi-)autonomous intervention are presented, subdivided in grasping, valve manipulation and force regulation tasks and cooperative manipulation. Some unconventional systems are also presented.