Marine Robotics for Deep-Sea Specimen Collection: A Systematic Review of Underwater Grippers

The collection of delicate deep-sea specimens of biological interest with remotely operated vehicle (ROV) industrial grippers and tools is a long and expensive procedure. Industrial grippers were originally designed for heavy manipulation tasks, while sampling specimens requires dexterity and precision. We describe the grippers and tools commonly used in underwater sampling for scientific purposes, systematically review the state of the art of research in underwater gripping technologies, and identify design trends. We discuss the possibility of executing typical manipulations of sampling procedures with commonly used grippers and research prototypes. Our results indicate that commonly used grippers ensure that the basic actions either of gripping or caging are possible, and their functionality is extended by holding proper tools. Moreover, the approach of the research status seems to have changed its focus in recent years: from the demonstration of the validity of a specific technology (actuation, transmission, sensing) for marine applications, to the solution of specific needs of underwater manipulation. Finally, we summarize the environmental and operational requirements that should be considered in the design of an underwater gripper.

DELPHIN2: AN OVER ACTUATED AUTONOMOUS UNDERWATER VEHICLE FOR MANOEUVRING RESEARCH

Delphin2 is a hover capable torpedo style Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV), developed at the University of Southampton to provide a test bed for research in marine robotics, primarily to enhance the manoeuvring capability of AUVs. This paper describes the mechanical design of the vehicle and its software architecture. The performance of the vehicle is presented as well as preliminary findings from the vehicle’s first fully autonomous video survey missions in Lough Erne, Northern Ireland. It is interesting to note that the low-cost of the vehicle and its development using a succession of MEng and PhD students has provided an excellent training environment for specialists in the growing area of marine autonomous vehicles.

Marine Robotics for Recurrent Morphological Investigations of Micro-Tidal Marine-Coastal Environments. A Point of View

Coastal zones are subjected to a wide range of phenomena acting on very different temporal and spatial scales: from decades to days and from hundreds of kilometers to tens of meters. Planning the management of such areas, thus, requires an accurate and updated knowledge of the ongoing processes. While standard monitoring activities are functional for the medium-long time scale and medium-large spatial scale, they struggle to provide adequate information concerning the short period (i.e., days) and small range (i.e., few meters). In addition, such operations are affected by high costs and logistic complexity since they generally involve the deployment of specific aircraft or maritime vehicles. On the contrary, the employment of robotic devices can represent a solution to these issues. Their proper use can allow for frequent surveys and enhance the coverage of the acquired data due to optimized mission strategies. Marine robotics has the potential to arise as an efficient complementary tool to standard monitoring techniques. Nevertheless, the use of marine robots is still limited and should be improved. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the current state of robotic technology, identifying both the benefits and shortcomings of its use for micro-tidal marine-coastal monitoring. The discussion will be supported by actual results, taken as an example, achieved using FeelHippo AUV, the compact Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) developed by the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Florence, Italy.

METEOR: A Mobile (Portable) ocEan roboTic ObsErvatORy

The oceans make this planet habitable and provide a variety of essential ecosystem services ranging from climate regulation through control of greenhouse gases to provisioning about 17% of protein consumed by humans. The oceans are changing as a consequence of human activity but this system is severely under sampled. Traditional methods of studying the oceans, sailing in straight lines, extrapolating a few point measurements have not changed much in 200 years. Despite the tremendous advances in sampling technologies, we often use our autonomous assets the same way. We propose to use the advances in multiplatform, multidisciplinary, and integrated ocean observation, artificial intelligence, marine robotics, new high-resolution coastal ocean data assimilation techniques and computer models to observe and predict the oceans “intelligently”—by deploying self-propelled autonomous sensors and Smallsats guided by data assimilating models to provide observations to reduce model uncertainty in the coastal ocean. This system will be portable and capable of being deployed rapidly in any ocean.