Navigation and Control Systems for a Reconfigurable Underwater Vehicle for Inspection, Free-Floating Intervention and Survey Tasks

Underwater environments may result in a challenging scenario in which several complex goals have to be performed. These tasks are usually carried out by using remote-controlled or autonomous robots, which largely reduce the cost and increase the safety of these operations. As a consequence, the interest in underwater robots is rapidly increased in the past few decades. More in detail, the last trends in marine robotics regard underwater vehicles with the ability to change their current configuration depending on the task to be accomplished. Concerning this particular topic, the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Florence (DIEF) has developed the innovative RUVIFIST vehicle (Reconfigurable Underwater Vehicle for Inspection, Free-floating Intervention and Survey Tasks), that can switch from two extreme configurations. In the context of this work, the authors present the methodologies used in adapting and extending the standard navigation and control systems, employed to handle a time-varying system as a reconfigurable robot.