Navigation filters for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles during geotechnical surveying experiments

This paper describes two navigation filters designed for an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) for geotechnical surveying. Both a Luenberger observer for a kinematic model of the vehicle as well as an extended Kalman filter for its dynamic model are addressed. The filters allow to fuse information coming from a Global Positioning System (GPS), a compass, a gyro, a depth meter, and acoustic based range measurements. A thruster model mapping low level actuator commands to vehicle surge velocity is also exploited in the design. The performances of both filters have been compared using the experimental data collected during the H2020 WiMUST (Widely scalable Mobile Underwater Sonar Technology) project experiments

ISME trends: Autonomous surface and underwater vehicles for geoseismic survey

The paper presents the recent and ongoing activities of the Italian Center named ISME on the use of Autonomous Surface Crafts (ASCs) and Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) for geoseismic survey. In particular, the paper will focus on the technologies and the algorithms developed in the framework of the H2020 European Project WiMUST

ISME research trends: Marine robotics for emergencies at sea

One of the main recent research trends of the Italian Interuniversity Research Center on Integrated Systems for Marine Environment (ISME) is the use of marine cooperative teams of autonomous robots within the fields of security, prevention and management of emergencies at sea. Such fields are of worldwide interest for obvious reasons, but they have recently gained relevance in the current historical moment, especially in the Mediterranean sea. Within such a dramatic context, the use of robots could certainly provide helpful for the execution of patrolling and detection, identification and classification of interesting elements, such as people to be saved or oil leaks, as well as the successive execution of the intervention/rescue strategy. This paper presents the Key Enabling Technologies as well as some Key Research Areas that are being currently investigated by ISME toward the ambitious objective of employing robotic solutions for the management of emergencies at sea

ISME activity on the use of autonomous surface and underwater vehicles for acoustic surveys at sea

The paper presents an overview of the recent and ongoing research activities of the Italian Interuniversity Center on Integrated Systems for the Marine Environment (ISME) in the field of geotechnical seismic surveying. Such activities, performed in the framework of the H2020 European project WiMUST, include the development of technologies and algorithms for Autonomous Surface Crafts and Autonomous Underwater Vehicles to perform geotechnical seismic surveying by means of a team of robots towing streamers equipped with acoustic sensors

The Widely scalable Mobile Underwater Sonar Technology (WiMUST) H2020 project: first year status

The Widely scalable Mobile Underwater Sonar Technology (WiMUST) project aims at developing a system of cooperative Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) for geotechnical surveying and geophysical exploration. The paper reports about the first year activities and it gives an overview of the main objectives and methods. Results relative to distributed sensor array, cooperative control, mission planning, communications and preliminary experiments are summarized

DexROV: Enabling effective dexterous ROV operations in presence of communication latency

Subsea interventions in the oil & gas industry as well as in other domains such as archaeology or geological surveys are demanding and costly activities for which robotic solutions are often deployed in addition or in substitution to human divers - contributing to risks and costs cutting. The operation of ROVs (Remotely Operated Vehicles) nevertheless requires significant off-shore dedicated manpower to handle and operate the robotic platform and the supporting vessel. In order to reduce the footprint of operations, DexROV proposes to implement and evaluate novel operation paradigms with safer, more cost effective and time efficient ROV operations. As a keystone of the proposed approach, manned support will in a large extent be delocalized within an onshore ROV control center, possibly at a large distance from the actual operations, relying on satellite communications. The proposed scheme also makes provision for advanced dexterous manipulation and semi-autonomous capabilities, leveraging human expertise when deemed useful. The outcomes of the project will be integrated and evaluated in a series of tests and evaluation campaigns, culminating with a realistic deep sea (1,300 meters) trial in the Mediterranean sea

Underwater intervention robotics: An outline of the Italian national project Maris

The Italian national project MARIS (Marine Robotics for Interventions) pursues the strategic objective of studying, developing, and integrating technologies and methodologies to enable the development of autonomous underwater robotic systems employable for intervention activities. These activities are becoming progressively more typical for the underwater offshore industry, for search-and-rescue operations, and for underwater scientific missions. Within such an ambitious objective, the project consortium also intends to demonstrate the achievable operational capabilities at a proof-of-concept level by integrating the results with prototype experimental systems