Design of a modular Autonomous Underwater Vehicle for archaeological investigations

MARTA (MARine Tool for Archaeology) is a modular AUV (Autonomous Underwater Vehicle) designed and developed by the University of Florence in the framework of the ARROWS (ARchaeological RObot systems for the World’s Seas) FP7 European project. The ARROWS project challenge is to provide the underwater archaeologists with technological tools for cost affordable campaigns: i.e. ARROWS adapts and develops low cost AUV technologies to significantly reduce the cost of archaeological operations, covering the full extent of an archaeological campaign (underwater mapping, diagnosis and cleaning tasks). The tools and methodologies developed within ARROWS comply with the “Annex” of the 2001 UNESCO Convention for the protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage (UCH). The system effectiveness and MARTA performance will be demonstrated in two scenarios, different as regards the environment and the historical context, the Mediterranean Sea (Egadi Islands) and the Baltic Sea.