Towards Omnidirectional Immersion for ROV Teleoperation

[Abstract] The use of omnidirectional cameras underwater is enabling many new and exciting applications in multiple fields. Among them, it will allow Remotely Operated Underwater Vehicles (ROVs) to be piloted directly by means of the images captured by omnidirectional cameras through virtual reality (VR) headsets. This immersive experience will extend the pilot’s spatial awareness and reduce the usual orientation problems during missions. This paper presents this concept and illustrates it with the first experiments for achieving this purpose.This research was supported by the Spanish National Projects ARCHROV (Marine ARChaeology through HROV/AUV cooperation) under the agreement DPI2014-57746-C3-3-R and OMNIUS under the agreement CTM2013-46718-R, the Generalitat de Catalunya through the ACCIO/TecnioSpring program (TECSPR14-1-0050) (to N. Gracias), and "la Secretaria d'Universitats i Recerca del Departament d'Economia i Coneixement de la Generalitat de Catalunya" (to J. Bosch)Generalitat de Catalunya; TECSPR14-1-0050https://doi.org/10.17979/spudc.978849749808

TWINBOT: Autonomous Underwater Cooperative Transportation

Underwater Inspection, Maintenance, and Repair operations are nowadays performed using Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROV) deployed from dynamic-positioning vessels, having high daily operational costs. During the last twenty years, the research community has been making an effort to design new Intervention Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (I-AUV), which could, in the near future, replace the ROVs, significantly decreasing these costs. Until now, the experimental work using I-AUVs has been limited to a few single-vehicle interventions, including object search and recovery, valve turning, and hot stab operations. More complex scenarios usually require the cooperation of multiple agents, i.e., the transportation of large and heavy objects. Moreover, using small, autonomous vehicles requires consideration of their limited load capacity and limited manipulation force/torque capabilities. Following the idea of multi-agent systems, in this paper we propose a possible solution: using a group of cooperating I-AUVs, thus sharing the load and optimizing the stress exerted on the manipulators. Specifically, we tackle the problem of transporting a long pipe. The presented ideas are based on a decentralized Task-Priority kinematic control algorithm adapted for the highly limited communication bandwidth available underwater. The aforementioned pipe is transported following a sequence of poses. A path-following algorithm computes the desired velocities for the robots’ end-effectors, and the on-board controllers ensure tracking of these setpoints, taking into account the geometry of the pipe and the vehicles’ limitations. The utilized algorithms and their practical implementation are discussed in detail and validated through extensive simulations and experimental trials performed in a test tank using two 8 DOF I-AUV

A hybrid control architecture for an AUV

Centro de Informacion y Documentacion Cientifica (CINDOC). C/Joaquin Costa, 22. 28002 Madrid. SPAIN / CINDOC - Centro de Informaciòn y Documentaciòn CientìficaSIGLEESSpai