Marine Robots and Dexterous Manipulation for Enabling Autonomous Underwater Multipurpose Intervention Missions (TRIDENT)

Framework: FP7 — Cooperation
Programme: Information and Communication Technologies
Destination: Cognitive systems, interaction, robotics
Action type: Collaborative project
Countries involved: Spain,Spain,Spain,Italy,Italy,Portugal,United Kingdom
Call:  (FP7-ICT-2009-4, 2009)
Start date: 2010-03-01
End date: 2013-02-28
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 4267749.0
EU funding (EUR): 3247787.0
Participants: 8
Project status: CLOSED

TRIDENT proposes a new methodology for multipurpose underwater intervention tasks with diverse potential applications like underwater archaeology, oceanography and offshore industries, going beyond present-day methods typically based on manned and / or purpose built systems.A team of two cooperative heterogeneous robots with complementary skills, an Autonomous Surface Craft (ASC) and an Intervention Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (I-AUV) endowed with a dexterous manipulator, will be used to perform underwater manipulation tasks.The proposed methodology is based on two steps.During the first step, the I-AUV is deployed from the ASC to perform a cooperative path following survey, where it gathers optical/acoustic data from the seafloor whilst the ASC provides geo-referenced navigation data as well as communication with the end user. During this phase of the mission the I-AUV will be doing accurate path following and terrain tracking, to maximize bottom coverage and data quality. The motion of the ASC will be coordinated with that of the I-AUV to achieve precise USBL (Ultra Short Base Line) positioning and reliable acoustic communications. After the survey, the I-AUV docks with the ASC and sends the data back to a ground station where a map is set up and a target object is identified by the end user.At the second step, the ASC navigates towards a waypoint near the intervention area where the I-AUV is launched to search for the object. When the object (i.e. the target of the intervention) has been found, the I-AUV switches to free floating navigation mode. The manipulation of the object takes place through a dexterous hand attached to a redundant robot arm and assisted with proper perception. Particular emphasis will be put on the research of the vehicles intelligent control architecture to provide the embedded knowledge representation framework and the high-level reasoning agents required to enable a high degree of autonomy and on-board decision making of the platform. The new methodology will allow the user to specify an intervention task, among a set of predefined ones, to be undertaken with regards to a particular target object selected by the end user by means of the map previously built. Hence the intervention task is seen as a semi-automatic process where the target is manually selected but then it is automatically recognized and manipulated by the robot in a complete autonomous way. The TRIDENT project brings together research skills specific to marine environments in navigation and mapping for underwater robotics, multi-sensory perception and a range of control techniques relating to intelligent control architectures, vehicle-manipulator systems and dexterous manipulation.

Keywords: robotics and automation,sensing and process control,automated reasoning and decision support,image recognition,complex real-world systems