Towards next generation Intervention Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (I-AUV): development of innovative mobile manipulation techniques

Autonomous underwater manipulation with free floating base is still an open topic of research; dynamic manipulation tasks, executed maintaining relevant vehicle velocities, offer an additional challenge. The focus of this paper is the modelling and the control of an Intervention Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (I-AUV). An accurate model of the whole system has been developed, including vehicle-fluid interaction. A control strategy for the whole I-AUV system is proposed, comprising a suitable grasp planning strategy. The performances of the I-AUV control system have been analysed in details by means of simulation of a dynamic manipulation task.