This project proposes a new methodology to provide multipurpose dexterous manipulation capabilities for intervention operations in unknown, unstructured and underwater environments.

Project Objectives:
– Cooperative navigation techniques to achieve robust, high accuracy navigation (localization) of all the vehicles involved in the robotic team.
– Innovative mapping algorithms to robustly build consistent multimodal maps of the seafloor.
– Guidance and control algorithms for the team vehicles alone but also to cooperatively guide and control both vehicles in formation.
– Embedded knowledge representation framework and the high-level reasoning agents required.
– Advanced acoustic/optical image processing algorithms to allow for feature detection and tracking.
– A redundant robotic arm endowed with a dexterous hand as an enabling technology for multipurpose manipulation underwater.
– Innovative strategies for the coordinated control of the joint AUV-Manipulator system.
– The mechatronics as well as the perception/action capabilities needed to face the autonomous docking of the I-AUV to the ASC.
– A multisensory control architecture, including a knowledge-based approach, to guarantee the suitable manipulation actions for enabling a multipurpose intervention system.